demographics – On Technology and the Future: Education, IoT, AI, Mobility, Games

Nokia’s “Comes With Music” service (unlimited downloads of 4m+ music tracks), which you get when you buy a phone, had been announced with much fanfare but it went a bit quiet after that. Now “early results” from the service show that it is mothers appear to be amongst the leading adopters, according to a Nokia executive. Unfortunately, that seems to be amongst the few bits of information they would let out into the public, the only other one being fairly obvious: recommendation is a driver (did they consult Amazon?) and chart coverage matters (Popularity matters? What?).

It would be wonderful would Nokia actually release a showcase of what it achieved with the service. I appreciate that they will want to wait since the service has gone live in the UK first and that only recently but I do hope that they will enlighten us…

Here‘s some always again interesting finds on mobile game demographics re-confirmed :

29% of all 25-34 year-old US-Americans downloaded mobile games in 2006, and 27% of the 18-24 year-olds but only 15% of 13-17 year-olds. The older folks also play more: 50% of the two older age groups vs 41% of the teens play mobile games on a daily basis.

The picture is naturally somewhat distorted as proportionately more adults own mobile phones than teens (although the latter catch up quickly).

However, considering that, in the UK, the average credit kids have on their pre-paid phones (which most of them have) is a meagre £5, which leaves little to no wiggling space when compared to game prices of £3-5 per pop: they simply don’t have the dough to buy more.

Another re-confirmed suspicion highlights the distribution challenge: 29 million US-Americans play mobile games, only 7 million download them, and that means 22 million play whatever is on their handset – whether it is a good or a bad one. 22 million gamers that do not access all the great games that are out there show that there is a severe disconnect regarding a) discovery and b) marketing and distribution in general. Whilst these will not be the only factors, they are significant.

Tag: demographics

Comes with Music Comes to Mama

It is NOT (only) the kids playing mobile games