market penetration

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Around 20 percent of the U.S. population aged 6 and up, or some 56.8 million Americans, have played a game on a social network, according to a new report from market research firm The NPD Group.

The company's "Social Network Gaming" report notes 35 percent of that segment is new to games, and had not played any traditional PC, home console, handheld or other types of video games before trying out social titles.

While the study shows that female and older respondents are more likely to be new gamers compared to other groups, it also found that the gender breakup of social network gamers is "fairly evenly divided" with 47 percent male and 53 percent female.

The firm adds that 10 percent of social gaming respondents have spent real money on microtransactions for those free-to-play titles, and 11 percent say they will likely buy virtual goods and currency in the future.

Those purchases affect their spending habits for other gaming activities, too, as traditional gamers say they spend 20 percent less on gaming overall since they started playing social network titles.

Sep. 1, 2010

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There is not much news for Google watchers at Apple events these days and what there is is usually bad. Steve Jobs started off the presentation today saying that Apple was activating 230,000 devices a day. Google's Eric Schmidt last month said that Google was activating over 200,000 devices a day and growing. But Steve Jobs can't believe those numbers are legit. He told the event audience that:

"We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers"

That's obviously a direct accusation aimed at Google. He added, " we think we are ahead of everyone".

Updated: A Google Spokesperson told me: "The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services." --meaning that Jobs' assertions were wrong.

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The market for NFC (Near Field Communication) mobile payments in the U.S. is in the nascent stage with an adoption rate of only 1.7%; this represents a huge opportunity for early movers offering the same. Adopting NFC mobile payment will open new revenue channels for banks as well as mobile operators as more than 94% of the U.S. population owns a mobile phone, and 60% of these have a card slot in their mobile phone. With the help of NFC technology, banks will be able to tap micro transactions made by cash, representing around 20% of the total transactions in the U.S. This will also help banks to capture the growing GEN Y population as well as the huge underbanked and unbanked population.

In 2009, the value of mobile payment transactions in the U.S. was $5.2 billion, constituting 6% of the global value of mobile payment transactions; this is expected to reach $56.7 in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 49.19%. The share of U.S in 2015 will reach approximately 10.6% of the global mobile payment transaction.

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Date: June 9, 2010

Speaker: Mark Donovan

Event: comScore Webinar

According to recent data, 30% of U.S. Mobile owners are now browsing the Mobile Internet. Since Mobile is one of the most widespread and fastest growing media channels in the world, reliable measurement is key to success. New trends suggest we are seeing a re-fragmentation of the Mobile Market.