Mobile gaming: $1B and counting

Despite its youth, the mobile gaming industry has already reached the billion dollar benchmark, according to a report from In-Stat.
The firm said it believes significant momentum for the gaming industry worldwide will continue to make the sector a key contributor to wireless data usage and revenues. The industry is expected to exceed $6.8 billion by 2013.
However, the market faces some challenges, said In-Stat.
“The mobile gaming development industry is highly fragmented due to the wide variety of mobile operating systems, available handsets, and lack of industry standardization,” says Jill Meyers, In-Stat analyst. “This fragmentation has resulted in mobile developers and publishers making the difficult decision of spending finite resources developing games on the platforms they believe will have the best chance of success.”
The study also found about one-third of respondents said they have played a game on their handset and about one-fifth of respondents said they have downloaded games from Internet sites other than their mobile carrier’s site.