Android & iOS game sales ‘surpass DS & PSP’

Games released on Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems are expected to make $1.9 billion in combined revenues across the US this year, new data suggests.

If 2011 estimates put together by analyst group Flurry are accurate, it would mean that smartphone games now bring in more revenue than DS and PSP games combined.

But the declining health of both PSP and DS – two systems at the end of their cycle – was as much a contributing factor than the rise of mobile phone gaming. Both companies are at the starting stages of their new hardware; Nintendo’s 3DS and Sony’s PS Vita.

Flurry, which has tracked data for the first ten months of 2011, as well as the two years prior, said iOS and Android games are set to make $1.9 billion in the US this year. Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PSP, by comparison, are due to make $1.4 billion, down from $1.6 billion in 2010 and $2.2 billion in 2009.

Flurry claims that Nintendo’s and Sony’s share for mobile game revenue has thus dwindled from 81 per cent (2009) to 42 per cent this year. iOS and Android games have tripled their market share from roughly 20 per cent in 2009 to nearly 60 per cent in just two years.