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July 27, 2006 |
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| Growing pains for mobile wagering | |||
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While the potential of mobile gambling
has entrepreneurs and operators in a froth, data collected by
M:Metrics indicates the market is embryonic.
• In Germany, the largest of the markets we examined, only 1.4 percent of mobile subscribers, or 603,970 people, reporting they accessed gambling content. • Despite its relatively liberal public policy on gambling via mobile, Britain’s audience is only 355,437, or 0.8 percent of mobile phone owners in that country. (It is curious that Brits lag their German counterparts in take-up of mobile gambling services given that M:Metrics data shows that they have a significantly higher propensity to use most other services.) • In France, only 162,211 people, or 0.4 percent of subscribers, reported engaging in gambling on their mobile phone. In each country, the audience for this type of content is male-dominated, with males twice as likely to place wagers with their mobile device. As is true with most other categories of mobile content, the most avid consumers on a proportional basis are those under 25. In the UK and Germany, it is 18- to 24-year-olds that define the market. (Curiously, in France, the age group with the highest propensity to access mobile gambling is 13- to 17-year-olds.) But as we see more advanced devices proliferate in the market and the expansion of faster networks, mobile gaming is fertile ground for gambling applications. Our data shows that in the UK, 4.8 million people (11.3 percent) played a downloaded game in the month of April. In Germany, the figure was 3.1 million (7.2 percent), in France, 1.1 million (2.7 percent). Better games, better devices and better discovery will add impetus to the mobile games sector, and purveyors of mobile gambling stand to benefit from the expansion of the market. -- Jaimee Minney, M:Metrics Seattle, Wash.-based M:Metrics is a leading authority on the consumption of mobile content and applications, benchmarking the performance of mobile operators, handset OEMs, platform vendors and media companies. With satellite offices in San Francisco and London, the company provides a broad range of services designed to enhance decision–making in the sector. For more information, go to: www.mmetrics.com |
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