Indians are the leading consumers of mobile games

Mobile media company BuzzCity has reported a significant increase in the number of mobile games being delivered to consumers via its Djuzz mobile gaming portal.
The company’s latest monthly Djuzz charts that were released yesterday show a 17 per cent increase in games downloaded globally in November, bringing the total for the month to 7.6 million games, with India dominating the charts.
KF Lai, the chief executive officer of BuzzCity, said, “A significant proportion of the growth in mobile gaming and other mobile internet usage that we are seeing is in Africa and Asia where mobile is a cheaper and more accessible form of internet connectivity.”
India, where the feature phone market has picked up very fast, continues to dominate the Djuzz charts of the regions that download the most games from the portal. Djuzz has served four million downloads in the country.
Localisation has been another reason for a strong mobile game market in the country.
Reebok ZigTech, a game which the brand developed to promote its ZigTech brand of trainers, and currently one of the most downloaded games in the country, is available exclusively to Indian audiences. The game was localised to suit the Indian market by having features such as a TV commercial starring the captain of the Indian Cricket Team Mahendra Singh Dhoni and wallpapers with Reebok’s Indian brand ambassadors.
Another reason for the large number of game downloads in India is its bustling mobile game developer market. Among the top ten games,three were developed by software companies that were either based in India or owned by an Indian party such as RockeTalk which is developed by Anagha Communication, IgFun is an international mobile publishing and development arm of Indiagames, and Reebok ZigTech which is developed by Mobimasta.
Noteworthy too are Indiagames and Nazara, both of which have multiple titles that are popular with Indian audiences.
“Localisation is one of the key elements required to better engage mobile users and it’s likely that this trend will further develop in 2011,” explains Lai.
“Furthermore, as mobile marketing continues to mature, it’s vital that brands don’t restrict their strategies to smartphones. Feature phones continue to dominate in many areas and incorporating these handsets within mobile marketing strategies is vital.”
This is supported by another trend emerging on Djuzz, which is the development of more local language content besides English, such as in Chinese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese to serve the increasing demand from global visitors.
Interestingly, the five phones most favoured by Indian gamers are Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Micromax.