Upwardly Mobile: Indians Catch The Gaming Bug Now

[city02 63]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/845546.cms

R SUBRAMANYAM

BANGALORE: The mobile gaming market in India is on an upward spiral, with cellular service providers claiming huge increase in game downloads. Mobile service operators said the Indian mobile user, like his western counterpart, is turning into a gaming enthusiast.

Indians traditionally have not been an electronic gaming populace. Barring personal computer-based games, consumers have not been exposed to console gaming devices in a big way. The discovery of mobile handsets as an entertainment medium, say industry watchers, addresses this latent need.

The popularity of mobile games is also being aided by the greater availability of feature-rich mobile handsets at affordable prices and the roll out of GPRS (general packet radio service) by GSM (global system of mobile communication) operators.

Jacob Perez, vice-president, sales and marketing, Spice Telecom, said there is an increase in demand for value-added services, of which games is an important component. The availability of Java (software) enabled wireless phones is also helping the game download frenzy.

While service providers are not willing to give a break up of the number of subscribers who download games, many said that youth form a large portion of the user base.

CDMA mobile service provider Reliance Infocomm, however, said that a large section of subscribers across all age groups are avid gamers.

Mahesh Prasad, president, application solutions group, Reliance Infocomm, said that all handsets barring the Motorola phones which Reliance offers, permit game downloads. The number of game application providers are also growing. Reliance now offers over 50 games and will extend it further, he said.

Analysts are of the view that the mobile gaming industry, while remaining a niche market, will continue its rise as a key contributor to wireless data usage and revenues. The momentum for mobile gaming is high in US and world-wide.

In-Stat/MDR, the technology market research firm, in a recent report estimates that by ’09, mobile gaming services in the US will generate $1.8bn annually, or approximately 4.4% of total wireless data revenues.

Moreover, by ’09, 78.6m wireless subscribers in the US will play mobile games, and gaming downloads will increase more than ten-fold from the ’03 levels. Mobile gaming, said the report, has come a long way since the game ‘Snake’ was first deployed on wireless handsets in 1997.

At present 6.5% of US wireless subscribers are very interested in purchasing mobile gaming services. Mobile handset makers said that consumers keen on mobile gaming choose handsets with colour displays, camera-phone functions and multimedia capabilities.

Kunal Ahooja, country head, Samsung India, said handsets that Samsung now offers come Java enabled with polyphonic sounds, rich colours and graphics. The company will soon launch a Samsung fan club portal, which will enable its subscribers to download multimedia rich contents. The number of hand-phone gamers in the country is growing, he said.

Considering the over 35m strong mobile user base in the country, gaming application is expected to be a major market for mobile service providers and content developers.

[Ashokjp 15]

Yeh its sure a true thing.. The mobile has become common even in the hands of a auto driver ..

When people are bored, the first thing is they find relaxation in cell..

Games are a good way if in computers or in cells