Google’s market-share lead is starting to get silly.
Around the world, approximately 1.1 billion people play games on portable devices — and most of those are Android phones or tablets, according to a new report from analysts at IDC and App Annie. The two intelligence firms have worked together to release their latest spotlight on the gaming industry, and they have found that Android now makes up nearly 75 percent of all smartphones and tablets used for gaming.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1747289,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']That figure is actually up 4.3 percentage points, and that comes at the expense of iOS and the rest of the market. In the first quarter of 2014, iOS was about 21 percent of this space, but in Q1 2015, it is now around 19 percent. Of course, Apple’s platform is still responsible for the majority of the $30 billion in spending on mobile games, but that’s also starting to change.
Compared to Q1 2014, spending on the iOS App Store is up a massive 30 percent. But Google Play is growing even faster. Spending on that platform grew by around 50 percent from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015 — although Google Play is still only at about 75 percent of what iOS makes.
Beyond the competition between iOS and Android, it’s clear that both are finding huge success. And one of the main reasons for that, according to App Annie and IDC, is online multiplayer games.
The study found that apps with online multiplayer tend to engage people for longer periods of time. In 2015, fans of these games spent about 35 minutes extra playing them every week on average. Consumers are also willing to spend more money.
“Among the top 50 mobile games, multiplayer games accounted for around 60 percent of consumer spending despite only contributing around 30 percent of the downloads in Q1 2015,” reads the report.
That trend holds true up through the top 10 highest-grossing mobile games. Six of those are strongly focused on multiplayer. And this is not always traditional online competitive gaming — although you get some of that from games like publisher Blizzard’s Hearthstone card battler. Many of these apps are focused on asynchronous clans where players work together and feel responsible for one another.
“Many top mobile multiplayer games allow players to form teams,” the report goes on to explain. “Team-based play builds social cohesion and generally makes titles stickier.”
[aditude-amp id="medium1" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1747289,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']
Expect just about every game — on mobile and everywhere else — to start focusing more on clans and alliances to keep players coming back.