Despite a 13 percent decline in the number of gamers in the past year, the mobile gaming market is still poised for growth, offering marketers opportunities, according to comScore.

The 13 percent drop was driven by a 35 percent decline in mobile gaming among feature-phone subscribers, who represent approximately 80 percent of the market. This contrasted with the 60 percent increase in the number of gamers via smartphone.

?[The implications the study?s findings have for mobile marketers] depends entirely on the strategy and focus of a particular mobile marketer or campaign, but the study demonstrates the rising importance of the smartphone audience,? said Mark Donovan, senior vice president of comScore, Reston, VA.

?Given the trend toward free?we have seen a significant rise in the number of people downloading full-version free games?it suggests that ad monetization of applications such as games will continue to grow,? he said.

Mr. Donovan had the following reccommendations for marketers:

• Have clear goals and target audience before choosing your mobile marketing strategy
• If the smartphone audience aligns with your target demo, in-game advertising may be a very good tactic to use
• Make sure to think broadly about the growing and dynamic smartphone sector?it?s more than just iPhone

Mobile gaming subscribers
The inevitable ascent of the mobile gaming market depends not only on smartphone subscribers' higher propensity to play games on their mobile devices, but also their heavier gaming activity across nearly every dimension, according to comScore.

Smartphone subscribers (47.1 percent) are three times more likely than feature phone subscribers (15.7 percent) to play games on their device at least once a month.

They are more than five times as likely to play games almost every day and far surpass their feature-phone counterparts across various methods of game play.

Smartphone subscribers also install significantly more games on their devices, with 27.3 percent having installed at least one game compared to just 5.6 percent of feature-phone subscribers.

A third of smartphone subscribers with games have more than five games installed on their phones, while less than one percent of feature phone subscribers have that many games installed.

Smartphone subscribers are more likely to play mobile games than feature phone subscribers across every gaming genre.

The genre with the highest penetration among smartphone subscribers is Arcade/Puzzle games at 12.9 percent, followed by Card games (11.9 percent), Word/Number games (11.4 percent) and Casino games (7.6 percent).

While casual game genres have higher penetration than hardcore genres (sports, racing, action/adventure, first-person shooter), the hardcore genres exhibit significantly higher adoption among smartphone subscribers.

This finding highlights the importance of the smartphone medium in driving adoption of higher quality gaming experiences.

?The data represents both a migration of mobile media consumers to smartphone platforms?something borne out by continued growth in this sector?and impact of app stores which are making it increasingly easy for smartphone owners to download content and applications, including games,? Mr. Donovan said.