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 According to The New Frontier: Portable and Mobile Gaming, a study from market research and consulting company Parks Associates, gamers will soon begin migrating from the traditional carrier deck to newer, more innovative channels. The report finds mobile game revenue generated through carrier decks are to decrease from 90% of the total U.S. mobile gaming revenue to 72% in the next five years.
By 2012, off-deck channels and ad-supported or subsidized mobile gaming will account for 28% of the market.
Parks Associates reports that many market forces are driving off-deck distribution of mobile content and services, including the growing influence of established media companies, experiments with alternative distribution channels and advertising models, and recent efforts to open carriers' walled gardens, including the Open Handset Alliance and Nokia's Ovi services.
"Lack of competition has left most carrier decks with an uninspired user interface and poor merchandising environment, which contributed to the recent market stagnation," said Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai, Director of Broadband and Gaming, Parks Associates. "Off-deck marketing and distribution, combined with new business models such as mobile game advertising, episodic content delivery, and micro-payments, will rekindle industry growth."
"Many mobile game publishers are working on off-deck initiatives," Cai said. "Even carriers like AT&T are building business-to-business platforms to allow game publishers to market and distribute games directly to mobile gamers."
By
Mathew Kumar
2008-02-08 06:00:00
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