Consumers Spent More On Mobile Games Than Handheld Games Last Quarter

By Daniel Perez on 02/21/2013, filed in Home > CellPhones

Gamers have probably known for some time now playing video games on their smartphones is a much easier and sometimes more rewarding experience than lugging around a dedicated handheld gaming device like the PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS. Part of the convenience also stems from our smartphone devices being with us at all times.

A new report published by research firms IDC and App Annie confirm what we’ve known for years as consumer spending on gaming applications on Apple’s App Store and Google Play have surpassed game spending on dedicated handheld gaming devices. Spending on dedicated handheld gaming devices tended to occur during certain seasons as 60 percent of Q4 spending occurred in December, which probably means they were given as holiday presents. On the other side of the spectrum, spending on iOS and Android was reported to be more evenly distributed throughout the year.

Unfortunately for both Nintendo and Sony, this report is only the start of what may come for the handheld gaming industry as more people can be found playing a quick game on their smartphone than a PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS.

Android: Android is the mobile operating system from Google. The software was originally built by a company called Android Inc, that was purchased by Google in 2005. From its modest debuts, Android has become a powerhouse that powers not only smartphones and tablet, but a host of other less high-profile devices and gadgets. Although Android is not a community-driven project, Google does release the source code as open-source under the Apache license. You can follow Ubergizmo on Android with Google Currents.

iOS: was once upon a time called iPhone OS, or "operating system", which is the software that provides all the basic device functionality and is the interface between the hardware and applications. iOS was introduced with the iPhone on January 9 2007, and it was originally not intended to be programmable by third parties. Steve Jobs had envisioned that developers could create Web Apps that would run in the browser. This changed less than one year after when the iPhone SDK (software development kit) was introduced in October 2007. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for this platform. iPhone OS became iOS on June 2010. Interestingly, both iPhone and iOS were former trademarks of Cisco, that Apple now uses under a license.

iPad: the iPad is Apple's tablet computer. While not "invented" by Apple (the newton was arguably a PDA), the iPad has re-ignited the tablet format as it appeared at the right time, with the right hardware and apps. the first iPad was launched on April 2010. It was followed by the iPad 2 in March 2011 and a new iPad (gen 3) in 2012.

iPhone: iPhone: The iPhone is Apple's line of smartphones. That was also the original name of the first iPhone, which was announced on January 9th 2007 by Steve Jobs during the Macworld Keynote. The iPhone was released to the public in June of the same year. The development of the iPhone started in 2004, was internally called "project purple" and was the fruit of a collaboration between Apple and AT&T. Since then, Apple has released new iPhone models every year, with the iPhone 3G in July 2008, the iPhone 3GS in June 2009, the iPhone 4 in June 2010, the iPhone 4S in October 2011 and the iPhone 5 in September 2012. The iPhone represented more than half of Apple's revenues in 2012.

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