iKS-Consulting expects that Russian mobile game market will reach $54 million in 2007
Consulting and research company iKS-Consulting specializing in the telecom market of Russia and CIS (ex-USSR countries - Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc.) recently conducted a thorough research of Russian digital games market. Since our magazine is focused on mobile content and services, we asked Elena Krylova, iKS-Consulting analyst, to provide us with some more information about mobile games market in Russia. iKS-Consulting found out that mobile games is the second largest sector of digital games market in Russia. Mobile games market hit $44.6 million US dollars in 2006 (according to Gartner global mobile games market reached $2.9 bln in the same year). iKS Consulting forecasts that mobile games sector will reach $54 million in Russia, though mobile games volume of overall Russian digital games market has decreased in 2007 (by 1 percent) because of online and casual PC/console games fast-paced growth.
Structure of Russian digital games market 2006-2007
Russian cellular carriers revenue from mobile games, with a tendency for growth (though maybe slow), comprises about 11% of the revenue from non-voice services. It is lower than the correspondent percentage in Southeast Asia (15-20%) but still higher than it is in the USA (6%). Mobile games market growth is stimulated by the increasing number of Pocket PCs and smartphones, sold in Russia. The sales of Pocket PCs and smartphones reached 1 506 thousand items (383,2% growth). The volume of convergent devices (i.e. smartphones and Pocket PC) is expected to hit 5-7% of all mobile telecommunication electronics market by the end of 2007. Currently more than 250 content providers operate in Russia - top ten of them generate about 85% of all mobile content revenues. Most popular mobile games in Russia are the same as in the rest of the world - these are games from Gameloft, Glu Mobile, InfoSpace, I-play and EA Mobile.
