Mobile free-to-play market ‘worth $4bn by 2015’

The freemium business will account for 55 per cent of the entire mobile games market within three years, new analyst data claims.

Digital goods research firm SuperData projects that mobile games revenues will treble to about $7.5 billion worldwide by 2015.

Freemium will represent more than $4.1 billion (55%) of that, it said, while ad revenue will account for $450 million (6%).

SuperData said it collects “anonymised” metric data from a wide array of sources, including MMOs, social games, casual games and virtual worlds. It also pools together transaction data from “all payment methods”.

China will drive the mobile games market, the analyst firm added, accounting for about 40 per cent of the global business.

Most mobile game customers spend between $8 and $15 per month, it also claimed.