According to comScore’s newly released overview of mobile gaming across the five leading European markets – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – the number of smartphone users in these countries playing games (at least once per month) increased 55% since last year.
This means that over 46 million EU5 smartphone users are gaming, or 42% of the potential audience.
The UK leads the pack, with more than half – 52% – of the smartphone audience gaming (14.2 million). British smartphone users also ranked first in terms of gaming penetration across daily and weekly gaming usage.
Social gaming is also up in EU5 markets, with a 42% increase in the last six months leading to 6 million EU5 smartphone gamers using social games via mobile (13% of smartphone gamers overall), as of February 2012. The Italian smartphone gaming audience ranked first in terms of penetration at 15.5%, while Spanish smartphone users were most likely to play games with other people (11%).
“The rise in mobile gaming is being propelled by the rapid adoption of smartphones and the vast ecosystems of game apps they provide,” says Hesham Al-Jehani, comScore Europe product manager for Mobile in the press release. Are advertisers moving just as quickly into the mobile gaming space?
