Popcap survey reveals smartphone owners are avid gamers

PopCap games, the Seattle based developer of infuriatingly addictive games like Peggle and Bejweled, have published survey results which demonstrate just how much impact smartphones are having on how consumers game. In a nutshell, if you have a smartphone you're a downloading and playing a lot of game apps. Here are some interesting observations that I pulled from Popcap's survey.

Smartphone owners are avid gamers
The Popcap survey revealed that 84% of mobile phone gamers who own a smartphone have played a game in the last week, which apparently qualifies you as an avid gamer. Smartphone owners also admitted to playing more games than last year, with 63% having increased their gaming in 2010. In fact, 68% of smartphone owners claimed that gaming was now part of their daily lives.


Consoles are no longer the gaming platform of choice
Some scary results for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft here. When asked which gaming device they play games on most often, 44% of those surveyed said their phones, compared with 21% for consoles and 30% for computers. Smartphone owners were even more likely to pick up their iOS or Android device to game than their consoles, with 55% of them playing games on their phones as a first preference.

Personally, I think that the results for consoles should be tempered by two points. Firstly, the survey only included mobile gamers, so they of course would be more likely to play games on their phones as a first choice. Secondly, I'd like to have more information on the amount of time people where spending on gaming on their phones. Instinctively, feel that smartphone gaming is still all about short bursts of entertainment where console gamers will spend many more hours on these devices, playing much deeper and challenging games, with friends online. I can't imagine that we're all going to throw out our consoles anytime soon.

Smartphone owners are converting from free to paid
As an app publisher, I was excited by the news that smartphone owners are converting from free apps to paid content. In total, 49% of smartphone gamers said that they'd upgraded a free trial game to the full paid version in the last year. In addition, 34% of smartphone gamers said that they had paid for additional content for an originally free game in the past year.

For any developer or publisher considering a freemium model for their app these results are especially encouraging. You would expect freemium to paid content conversion to be a lot higher for games, but 34% is more than I expected.  

Sources: Popcap Survey PDF & Popcap Survey press release