Apple iPhone gamers spend five times more than Android gamers

A new study has found that while mobile gaming has seen sharp increases across the board, there is no doubt who the winner is when it comes to how much customers are actually spending on their mobile game experiences. The average iPhone/iPad gamer is spending about five times more money on their mobile games than the average Android gamer. That is the result found from research firm Newzoo, which looked at actual data from iOS and Android downloads as well as 17,000 survey respondants.

The company found that 28% of smartphone gamers are gaming on an iPhone, and 60% of tablet gamers are gaming on an iPad, but iOS is accounting for much more of the industry on a revenue basis. In fact, 84% of all mobile gaming revenue came from iOS devices, according to Newzoo. And yes, as you might have expeced, only a tiny fraction of that is actually coming from the cost of the games themselves. The rest comes from in-app purchases.

Get this – 91% of all Android and iOS gaming revenue comes from purchases made within the games. Only 9% is attributed to the amount of money spent at the time of download. One thing that Newzoo attributes iOS success to is the seamless purchase experience. “When analyzing Apple’s successful monetization, there is one dominant factor outside of differences in audience demographics and preferences: Apple requires users to connect their credit card information directly to their account, thus creating a seamless purchase experience,” said Newzo CEO Peter Warman.

[via Forbes]