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Migration of Digital Services to Mobile: in Gaming, mobile becomes largest sector this year

The migration in digital proceeds relentlessly only in one direction: towards mobile. In everything from music to TV to newsmedia to books to yes, of course.. gaming. Newzoo has just published a new study of the global videogaming industry (worth $109 Billion dollars this year 2017, up 8% from last year). Here is Games Industry Biz article with the study and stats. What do we think of this world of Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Angry Birds and of course now we must add.. Pokemon Go?

There are five major sectors of gaming revenues by gaming platforms: PC, internet, tablet, mobile and console gaming. This is a good methodology in that it separates out tablets from 'mobile' so we don't need to speculate on the relative scales of those, as many other analysts in various digital service groups still combine tablets into the slice of mobile. Last year 2016 is the last time that console gaming revenues still exceeded those of mobile gaming. This year mobile takes that lead. Mobile will account for 32% of total videogaming revenues this year vs 31% of console gaming. PC games account for 23%, tablets 10% and online internet gaming 4% of total videogaming global revenues. So on our thesis of 'mobile will win' here is another milestone. A giant media industry - far bigger than cinema or music, and on par with global radio broadcasting industry revenues, gaming now finds that mobile is its largest slice. This year, 2017. 18 years from the birth of mobile gaming as an industry (launched first on NTT DoCoMo's iMode service on mobile phones, paid mobile gaming started in 1999 in Japan).

Where is gaming headed? PC gaming, online gaming and console gaming slices are flat vs last year in terms of revenues. Tablet gaming shows modest gains. But mobile? Grew by a massive 19% in just one year. Mobile slice of gaming is growing at more than twice the rate of the gaming industry overall. What does Newzoo then expect of the near future with these trends? By 2020 Newzoo expects 40% of total videogaming revenues to come from mobile and be worth $65 Billion dollars all by itself. Yeah... mobile mobile mobile. If we study the pioneering mobile service industries like gaming or music or messaging, we can also draw lessons that will apply to later industries that get into mobile like payments or retail or travel. 

How Does 1B Augmented Reality Users Sound Now? As Facebook Pushes AR

How does that 1 Billion AR users by year 2020 sound now? Facebook has just ended its big developer event and the big theme was.. Augmented Reality. In fact FB now suggests it wants all its users to be the beta testers for FB's ideas in AR. Thats ... more than 1B users right there. Even before we add the other giants also playing in the AR space like Google and Microsoft; or the sudden successes we see such as Pokemon Go. Yes. Its getting ever more solid, my original forecast that AR will hit 1B users by year 2020. And yes, AR will be the 8th mass media.

 

When Facebook says AR is the next big thing, its time to re-watch the 'definitive' TEDx talk about AR - has had over 45,000 views.

And if you need the numbers, so you can judge your own company digital strategy and how it relates to emerging AR opportunities - the TomiAhonen Almanac added its first AR stats for the 2017 edition.