Mobile Gaming in India – Statistics and Source of Consumption [Market Report]

May 7, 2009

By sinha

[Guest article contributed by Vital Analytics, Bangalore based market research firm focused on telecom space.]

Though mobile gaming in India is still in its nascence (SMS still constitutes the largest chunk of the VAS pie, mobile gaming is approximately 1%) With the onset of 3G, the mobile gaming industry, which is currently pegged at Rs 100 crore, is estimated to grow by up to 200% by the next financial year, say industry experts. Today variety of games are available and many games are offered for free downloads, making games very popular among the mobile users.

Statistics and frequency of playing games

Let us take a look at some real statistics on mobile games. Based on data gathered in April 2009 for Feb/March mobile game users it is found that 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)

Frequency of playing games	Unique Users (Millions)
Played 1 to 3 times in last month	46.0220
At least once a week	28.5380
Almost daily	30.4700

[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)

There are several mobile game providers in India today. Some data was gathered, considering the most popular games providers. It is observed , 8.92 million Urban Indian purchased game(s) for their phone in February/March 2009 .

As seen in graph , it can be noticed, service provider is the most popular source for purchasing game(s) with 3.59 million urban Indians citing purchasing one from them followed by Rediff (1.87 million), Hungama.com (1.51 million) and zapak.com (1.40 million). Among service providers Bharti Airtel is the most cited source accounting for almost 40% of purchasers.

Popular mobile games purchase source

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.

Source	Purchased (millions)	Free (millions)	Purchased : Free
Service Provider	2.3810	1.8380	1.29 : 1
Indiagames	0.5850	2.2700	0.25 : 1
Rediff	0.9910	1.6310	0.60 : 1
Zapak	0.7720	2.5580	0.30 : 1
Hungama	0.9790	1.3900	0.70 : 1
Mauj	0.4570	1.0120	0.45 : 1

Almost 40% of power users are between the ages of 25 and 34 while an additional 35% are between 18 and 24 years old.

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.

Update:

Owing to some of the comments raised, Vital Analytics team has shared the methodology of collecting data:

–

We would like to clarify the numbers mentioned. Firstly the number “Rs. 100 Crore” is per the article on The Financial Express, March 30^th 2009,” Onset of 3G may trigger boost in mobile gaming market” (http://www.financialexpress.com/news/onset-of-3g-may-trigger-boost-in-mobile-gaming-market/440489/). Reason we used the March number cited here was that the data mentioned is for the period of Feb and March 2009.

Secondly we apologize as there is a Labeling error; the numbers for “source of download” table are “power gamers” (people who play games on their mobile phones, almost on a daily basis). If we look at all the mobile gamers who downloaded a game on their phone (for Free or Purchased), India Games is one of the top 5 sources, where 8.42M URBAN INDIANS use the site for downloading a game (free or purchased) on their phones

This data was collected over a period of two months, February to March 2009 by interviewing 3,883 adult urban Indians (people living in urban India owning a mobile phone). We use this data to project to Urban Indian population, listed below are the source of benchmarks for our projections:

- Cellular Operator Association of India (www.coai.com)/Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (www.auspi.in)

- India census (http://censusindia.gov.in/)

- ORG MARG Report

- Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)

Rural subscriber numbers for Q1, 2009 are our estimation based on rural subscriber growth in 2008 as TRAI is behind by one quarter.

Our projected data as you look at service provider level (below) for Urban India is 99% accurate:

Wireless Group	TRAI	VA	Variance
Bharti	23.5%	22.9%	0.6%
Reliance	19.3%	20.1%	-0.8%
Vodafone	16.4%	17.5%	-1.1%
BSNL	11.8%	10.5%	1.3%
Idea	8.9%	9.6%	-0.6%
Tata	11.7%	11.6%	0.0%
Aircel	4.3%	3.9%	0.4%
MTNL	1.7%	1.7%	0.0%
Spice	1.3%	1.4%	-0.1%
BPL	0.8%	0.9%	-0.1%

The data is self-reported, where we asked users to tell us what they did in last 30 days and thus is based on their perceptions.

–

What’s your opinion on the report?

Also see: Mobile VAS subscribers in India – Insights/Prediction

Tags: hot, Indian Gaming Industry, market report, mobile gaming in india

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Author

Vishal Gondal on May 8, 2009 at 10:18 am

its my request to Pluggd.in to publish reports only from credible sources. This report is nothing less than ‘junk’

The mobile gaming market in India is already around 200 Cr and this has been extensively reported by many of the respectable trade bodies like FICCI, NASSCOM, CII

A lot of Numbers of Indiagames which is a large player in this business is in public due to UTV our largest shareholder and any moron can find this information.

From an indiagames perspective I can surely say that the numbers mentioned here related to Indiagames and the Industry are no where close to the actual numbers.

This is nothing but another attempt by some amateurs to make a fast buck and get some cheap publicity..

Its best that they withdraw this report or provide credible proof of where they collated this junk.

Naveen on May 11, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Vishal,

Pls find the update to the article in response to your comment above.

After reading the update, if you feel our data does not line up or there are significant gaps, we would be more than happy to discuss with you in detail. We are very transparent when it comes to our methodology and in no way are looking at reporting manufactured numbers. We strive to ensure that we are not perceived as a ‘fly by night operator’ and maintain professionalism and take a lot of pride in what we do. If you need any further clarification please feel free to contact me on nmenon@vitalanalytics.net , I will make myself available according to your schedule.

regards,
Naveen

Manish Malik on May 14, 2009 at 10:27 am

I would like to get a copy of the report. Can only comment after going through in detail.

Naveen on May 14, 2009 at 12:19 pm

Manish,
I would be happy to send you a copy of the report. Please send me an email, so I can respond with a copy of the report.

Thanks
Naveen

Manish Malik on May 15, 2009 at 5:24 pm

Hi Naveen

manish.malik@hungama.com

Growth of the web + Mobile gaming in India | Copenhagen INK on June 5, 2009 at 7:55 am

[...] subscriber base, gaming is certainly the next big thing to enjoy on the go. Sources: TechCrunch + Pluggd.in + UM Trending [...]

Anshul on September 2, 2009 at 12:59 pm

Dear Manish, Vishal

After your comments above and the response by plugged.in, would be keen to know the results of the verification and your current stand in view of your comments above.

Please share

rahul on November 5, 2009 at 6:09 pm

naveen,
i would like to go through the report.
mail it on rahuljiwane@in.com
regards,
rj

Anil on November 13, 2009 at 2:11 pm

Naveen,
plz mail me the report @
anil.1387@gmail.com
regards
AT

Ashutosh on November 19, 2009 at 8:56 am

Hi,

I would like to have an updated copy of the record. Please email at the following address: aceashutosh@yahoo.com

thanks

Mayank on December 5, 2009 at 6:10 pm

Kindly share a copy with me too.
thanks

jigar ajmera on December 7, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Can you please mail me a copy of this interesting report as well? Thank you in advance.

Vital Analytics Sales on December 7, 2009 at 4:49 pm

Thank you for your comments, the report is not a free report and is a subscription based report. If there is interest in purchasing the report, please send us an email at sales@vitalanalytics.net

Savio Saldanha on December 29, 2009 at 1:38 pm

I’d like to have a copy of this report – email would be nice : savio.saldanha@arvato-mobile.com

Roopa Sharma on February 6, 2010 at 12:50 pm

Hemanth Sharma is coming this February to India’s first and independent annual summit for the game development ecosystem – India Game Developer Summit (http://www.gamedevelopersummit.com/) to discuss the steps involved, the tools Adobe provides and a practical walkthrough to build innovative Flash games for devices in a matter of minutes. He will also cover the new features of Flash Platform that are offered to end users, gaming enthusiasts and developer geeks right from designing, developing, emulating on your desktops to successfully making your content provide similar user experience across a range of devices/platforms.