When people take a spin on their smartphone during the day, their games are the main attraction. Games are the most downloaded app on smartphones today.
Mobile games are a new drug. If you are not one of the people that already are experiencing this, your friends are. A new report from Nielsen shows that a landslide ( in election statistics anyway ) of smartphone owners have been downloading mobile games onto their handsets over every other category of program. Other competing categories included news, weather, social networking, music, videos, shopping ( retail ), dining, sports, communications, productivity, food and drink, travel, education, health and personal care. One of the most surprising losers in the statistics was music, which came in fifth with 44 percent compared to the 64 percent of people who downloaded games.
The details of the report were amassed from information of the last 30 days, so the data is fresh. The information proves that without a doubt, smartphones are being used for play rather than for work or other uses. The report shows that those who have Windows Phone 7 ( Microsoft ), iOS ( Apple ) and Android ( Google ) mobile operating systems were the most likely to download games, in that order. An interesting detail about the downloading shows a disparity between those who are downloading and those who are actually enjoying their games. While more people on Windows Phone 7 were doing downloading, it was those with iOS who actually were doing the gaming. The Apple iOS group spends 14.7 hours a month on playing their games while the Windows Phone 7 group only spends 4.7 hours doing the same. An average mobile gamer plays 7.8 hours of games per month.
Those who download apps are overwhelmingly supportive of spending money to enjoy them. A whopping 93 percent of the same group from the last 30 days told Nielsen that they are willing to pay for the games they play. In comparison, those who downoad news apps are a bit more frugally minded. Only 76 percent of downloaders are willing to pay for the news apps. News apps are the sixth most popular app category for mobile users.
The second most popular category that mobile downloaders are willing to pay for is “entertainment”. Companies like Netflix and Hulu are prime examples of this, with streaming video apps and html5 web apps. Bringing in third place among most popular downloads is “productivity”, meaning work is still on the minds of those who download apps.
