Mobile Gaming Growth Diminishing: Report

Has the mobile gaming bubble gone bust? A report by mobile analytics firm Flurry seems to indicate that it is on the verge of doing so.

Flurry finds the mobile gaming segment has grown the least of all major mobile categories, clocking in at a growth of 30 percent.

Meanwhile overall app usage (which the firm defines as a user launching an app) went up by 76 percent in 2014. In spite of this, mobile gaming sessions (a session is defined as one use of the application by an end user) were up by 30 percent. This is half of 2013, which saw game sessions grow by 61 percent.

Mobile gaming isn't the only category in decline. Similarly, previous mobile growth drivers such as music, media, and entertainment have succumbed to diminishing returns with a mere 33 percent compared to 79 percent from 2013.

"This double-digit growth is impressive in any context, but we are witnessing a shift where the growth in mobile has moved from apps for entertainment to apps that help us accomplish our daily tasks," Flurry Analytics president and CEO Simon Khalaf said in the blog post.

However it's not all gloom and doom - categories such as productivity and lifestyle have seen triple digit growth, at 121 percent and 174 percent respectively.

In addition to this, messaging and social apps grew 103 percent, health and fitness apps were up by 89 percent as was travel applications. The overall average growth was 76 percent year on year. Flurry recorded a sum total of 2.079 trillion mobile app sessions in 2014.

"While 2013 was the year messaging apps took off, 2014 was the year retail came to mobile in a big way. Sessions in shopping apps on iOS and Android increased by a whopping 174 percent year-over-year (note: for iOS, the "Lifestyle" category includes more than shopping). On Android alone, the shopping category increased by 220%," Khalaf said.