Mobile Gaming Poised for Massive Growth in India

TUNE, the Seattle-based enterprise SaaS for mobile marketing company has released a report on mobile gaming trends, gaming habits, purchases and behaviour patterns of the Indian mobile gamers. The report titled, ‘India & Mobile Gaming: Poised for Massive Growth’ comprises insights and data collected from over 3,500 Indian smartphone owners and over 220 million mobile app installs in India mapped from January-September 2016.

The report highlights the fast growing pace of mobile gaming in India. In the first quarter of 2016, TUNE witnessed a significant double-digit growth of mobile app installs in the gaming vertical. Combined with industry estimates this proves that mobile games in India are growing at an average rate of 56%. The report states that Indian gaming revenue is set to double in the next three years and hit INR 250 billion by 2019, owing its growth to the increase of smartphone penetration and higher in-app spending in the market.

As per the TUNE report, Indian mobile gamers are more likely to buy virtual goods. In fact, 34% of Indians respondents admitted to spending money in mobile games every month. Interestingly, a tiny fraction of players are the highest contributors to game revenue, just as it is seen in other markets globally. Specific to India, 2.5% of Indian gamers provide over half of game revenue, and 5% account for almost 80% of all game monetization in the country.

Another key finding revealed that women are serious mobile gamers in India, with 87% playing a game at least one hour per week. This number matches the North American data, where women make up 55% of all mobile gamers. Of the women surveyed, 63% said that they prefer playing single player games and 18% prefer playing against another player. Interestingly, women prefer single-player games to an even greater extent than men.

John Koetsier, TUNE’s mobile economist added, “As per our research, the number of app installs in India doubled last year and in fact, Indians downloaded more than 3X as many commerce-oriented apps per capita as the next highest country, Brazil. Although relatively nascent, Indian mobile gaming industry is catching-up fast and our research highlights the immense potential it holds for gamers, game developers, mobile publishers and advertisers.”