Game-Download Trend Is Up

By Staff On May 22 2006 - 6:00am

The number of games downloaded wirelessly to cellphones grew to 8.2 million in March, up 53 percent from January's 5.4 million, and the number of mobile-game buyers grew 44 percent during that time to 5 million, market research company Telephia found.

Consumers paid for about 88 percent of the downloaded games; the rest were free downloads.

For the first quarter, Telephia found the top five games by revenue were Tetris (5.2 percent of revenue), Tetris Deluxe (3.6 percent), Bejeweled (2.6 percent), JAMDAT Mahjong (2.2 percent), and Ms. Pac-Man (2 percent).

Telephia gathers its statistics from the phone bills of an opt-in panel of almost 35,000 cellphone users.