Gamers Spend 4X More on Mobile Games than Dedicated Handhelds [Report]

Just a couple years ago the idea of mobile phones or tablets challenging dedicated home gaming consoles sounded like a good joke. We have seen how this materialized: the App Store gave green light to indie game developers. Today’s report from App Annie and IDC brings the evidence: iOS and Android make more money from games than does the dedicated handheld console industry.

iOS was the fastest growing platform in terms of gamers, and now it was the turn of Android — it was about time — to outgrow Sony’s PSP and Vita; and Nintendo’s DS, DSi, and 3DS in the second quarter of 2013.

As earlier reports already have noted, games continued to be the most popular downloads, fueling the growth of the application stores on both platforms. While games represented roughly 40% of all downloads in both app stores, Google Play spending on games was slightly more than that of the iOS App Store. Also, in terms of revenue, games accounted for about 70% of app revenue in both iOS App Store and Google Play.

Looking at the most popular games, here is what App Annie and IDC found: the No.1 game was the Clash of Clans, seconded by Puzzle & Dragons, while the third place went to Candy Crush Saga.

Do you use dedicated handheld consoles anymore?