Credit crunch provides a boost for affordable mobile gaming

Product: TryNBuy | Manufacturer: M-Biz Global

by Spanner Spencer

A newly published sales report from embedded mobile content provider M-Biz Global suggests the failing worldwide economy is encouraging consumers to seek out more affordable means of entertainment - and mobile games has seen a significant boost in response.

M-Biz Global provides its popular TryNBuy service through embedded software preloaded onto vanilla handsets (SIM-free to you and me) and has seen an impressive 62 per cent sales increase.

Specifically, M-Biz Global revealed that December produced the following results:

• 50 per cent increase in the number of mobile games sold in the UK compared to the average sales of Jan-Nov 2008, and 21.29 per cent increase across the globe.
• Mini Golf: Las Vegas from Digital Chocolate was the most popular game in the UK.
• 25th December was the most popular day in December for mobile game downloads.
• Six times more games were sold on 25th Dec compared to the average daily sales in the UK.

Christmas Day is an understandable candidate for the firm’s most popular sales boost, since vanilla handsets make up about 30 per cent of global handset sales and are the simplest option for gifts – seeing as they’re not tied to a specific SIM, network or operator.

Clearly they were a popular present for 2008 (did you get one? Tell us about it in the comments section below).

Considering this was something of a console-free Christmas, it seems the mobile platform stepped in to fill the seasonal hardware gap, and recruited a significant number of new pocket gamers in the process.

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