A new study has revealed that smartphone gaming is exploding, and the iPhone is at ground zero. Rumors of an "App Store Plus" for premium games and other software only sound sweeter after this news.
One of iPhone's greatest qualities is that it is a smart phone—as long as you can get over the glaring lack of some key features like task management and... erm, what's that other one people keep on about? Well regardless, the iPhone has ushered in a new age of personal connectivity and productivity, and according to a new study, it's turning out to own the smartphone gaming space as well.
In addition to overtaking the incumbent RAZR as the top selling phone in the US, findings from a new comScore study show that the iPhone is leading the smartphone gaming charge. In November 2007, not a single smartphone appeared in the top 10 list of phones used for mobile downloads. Running the same survey a year later in November 2008, comScore found that six of the top 10 of those phones are now smartphones, headed by the 8GB iPhone 3G. Smartphone owners who downloaded games nearly tripled during this period from 734,000 to nearly three million, with 32.4 percent of iPhone owners reporting that they downloaded a game during the survey period.
Next on the list of smartphones is the original 8GB iPhone, third is the 16GB iPhone 3G, and the original 16GB is number seven, according to further numbers obtained by Macworld. The BlackBerry Curve 8330 and Curve 8310 fill out the smartphone appearance, and the "smartphone-like" Samsung Instinct M800 and LG VX10000 Voyager also make appearances among the top 10 gaming phones.
Truth be told, comScore's study mostly serves to reaffirm what we already know: the iPhone makes for a great (though, yes, not perfect) gaming platform that is growing in popularity. Rumors of an App Store Plus on the way with premium $19.99 content only help to stir up speculation for how high this ceiling goes.
Source: ars technica
