The hot mobile device market will propel the tablet gaming market to a mammoth $3.1 billion by 2014, according to a study by mobile analyst firm Juniper Research Ltd.
By the year 2016, tablet gaming will make up no less than a third of the entire mobile gaming industry, the research firm reported.
Revenue is expected to come not only from the outright sales of games but also from the purchase by gamers of virtual goods, according to a post by Sovan Mandal in the Good e Reader site.
Charlotte Miller, author of the report, said “the tablet is the perfect device for playing mobile games – the screens are large enough for the user to see the action, no matter how big their hands are. Tablet owners also tend to have a larger disposable income, as tablets are often bought outright rather than subsidized by operators. Higher user satisfaction with games and a bigger wallet mean that tablet games look to be highly lucrative.”
Manufacturers are expected to sell anywhere from 125 million to 150 million units next year. Apple alone is projected to sell about 60 million iPads in 2012.
“The challenges behind pay-to-play are increasing,” acknowledges Bram Sugarman, an associate at OMERS Ventures, which is making investments in digital content publishers. Gaming companies can look like a “terrible investment,” he says, because of the difficulty extracting money from users and the stiff competition faced in the app stores.
Still, some gaming companies are meeting OMERS qualifications for investment. The firm looks for two main pillars. The first is “the best entrepreneurs, talented people that have done this before,” Sugarman says. The second is potential for mass market growth within five to 15 years.