With the onset of 3G, the mobile gaming industry, which is currently pegged at approximately Rs 100 crore (as of March 30, 2009), is estimated to grow by up to 200% by the next financial year, say industry experts.

Based on data reported in April 2009 for the months of Feb/March on mobile gaming in India approx 30 million urban Indians use their mobile phones to play games on a daily basis (12.5%). The Indian gaming industry though at its cusp, is showing huge potential in sheer market size. Looking at data in the February- March 2009 time frame there were a total of 105 million Indian consumers playing games on their mobile phone, of this 30 million consumers played games on their cell phone almost daily.

Mobile Gaming report: “frequency of playing games” (Two month ended March 2009, Urban Indian Mobile Phone Users)

Table 1 - Feb/March 2009 statistics on mobile gaming

Nokia continues its dominance in Indian mobile space accounting for 65% of power user’s handset followed by Sony Ericsson a distant second (10.6%).

Source of game(s)

Downloading games for free vs. purchasing continues to enjoy a 2.25:1 ratio with 85% of power users who downloaded a game (8.83 million) citing downloading for free while 37% did so by paying a fee. Though free game downloads dominated, looking at the table below, service providers seem to have got their model right with more consumers purchasing games from a service provider website than downloading for free (1.29:1 ratio). On the other hand, third party providers see a complete inverse ratio on purchased v/s free downloads.

When it comes to source of game downloads service provider continues to be the most popular source while service provider is also the only source where number of people purchasing is higher than downloading for free. Among service providers Bharti Airtel is the most cited source accounting for almost 40% of purchasers. Almost 40% of Power users are between the ages of 25 and 34 while an additional 35% are between 18 and 24 years old.

Mobile Gaming report: “source of download: power gamers , people playing games on their phones on an almost daily basis” (Two month ended March 2009, Urban Indian Mobile Phone Users)

Table 2 - Statistics on games purchased v.s free

The ever growing youth subscriber base in India is going to contribute significantly to the growth of mobile gaming in India. This coupled with Handset manufacturer’s re-evaluating their strategy (Nokia for e.g recently announced the overhaul of its India strategy positioning itself as a complete solution provider, LG is pushing out low cost motion sensor gaming handsets) is going to see a huge contribution from this section to the overall VAS pie.

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