The volume of the mobile games market in Russia is $392 million

The volume of the Russian mobile games market by the end of 2012 will amount to $392 million, according to the experts of the analytical company J’son & Partners in their study “The Russian mobile games market”.

It should be noted right away that the report is very controversial, and for several reasons at once.

Firstly, the company’s analysts understand mobile games not only as games for smartphones, but also games for regular phones (including Java). Given the completely different nature of the functioning of the markets, this is a very ambiguous step. From our point of view, it would be much more appropriate to prepare two different studies.

Secondly, in its report, the company did not take tablets into account, stating, literally, the following: “games on tablet PCs are a formed separate market with quite a lot of differences from games for mobile phones.” This statement, to put it mildly, is far from true, since the smartphone games market and the tablet games market are one. 

And it’s strange that the huge difference between the markets of games for classic phones and games for smartphones, analysts were not confused, but the existence of tablets – yes.

Why are we talking about this to everyone at the beginning? So that the impressive figures just below would not confuse anyone, and the estimates of J’son & Partners were treated, let’s say, with caution. 

Global Mobile Games market

According to J’son & Partners data provided by the Mobile Content website, the volume of the global mobile games market will amount to $9.9 billion by the end of this year. Moreover, by 2016 it will increase to $15.4 billion. However, the intensive growth of the market will stop in 2013. According to analysts, by this time “the positions of the main participants among developers, publishers, app stores will have already been determined.” 

As J’son & Partners accurately noted, “already today, the high level of competition practically deprives small developer companies of profits when they refuse to support publishers.” 

The global audience of mobile games at the end of 2012 will number 1.02 billion people, by 2016 there will be 1.53 billion. 

Again, do not forget that we are talking about playing on regular phones. As for smartphones, the numbers here are probably much smaller. Just this October, Strategy Analytics reported that the number of active smartphones in the world reached 1 billion. It is clear that not every owner of the device plays it. 

Analysts also decided to identify the main trends of the mobile market. Here, by the way, there was not a word about Java, only about smartphones. There were no discoveries. All trends are relevant, but they were also relevant a year ago: geolocation games, the growing popularity of gambling, the dominance of the shareware distribution model, the emergence of cross-advertising, the demand for mobile metrics and the emergence of multiplatform application development tools. Nothing new and curious. 

Mobile Games market in Russia

In Russia, J’son & Partners counted 38.6 million mobile gamers. According to the company’s forecasts, by 2016 there will be almost one and a half times more of them – 65.1 million people. It is clear that most of the so-called mobile gamers use regular phones to play. The share of Java games in the domestic market reaches 64%. And in recent years, it has been rapidly falling, and the share of smartphone games is also actively growing. 

By the end of 2012, the Russian mobile application market will amount to $392 million. It is not difficult to calculate, with certain reservations, of course, that in this case our smartphone games market will amount to a serious $180 million. Yes, the mobile market in Russia, as a whole, will reach $707 million by 2016. 

The drivers of the Russian market, according to analysts, are: an increase in 3G network coverage, an increase in the range of smartphones, their cheapening and “extensive experience of developers and publishers.” The last aspect is completely unclear. What is the experience? In the development of mobile applications, in their monetization, in promotion?

Also funny: analysts at J’son & Partners were surprised that in the Russian market “large budgets are spent not only on game development, but also on mobile marketing.” A little higher, they also wrote that competition in the market is high, and then, surprise, marketing costs for some reason also increased. 

Smartphone Users

J’son & Partners also conducted a survey of smartphone users as part of its mobile market research. According to him, 40% of owners of “smart phones” play games on their devices every day, and 51% also play on a PC. 

Among those who play, 83% have primary, 44% have secondary and only 38% of the respondents have higher education. Yes, 26% of users over the age of 55 play mobile games on their smartphones every day.