Analyst: Mobile Gaming To Be Worth $10B in 2014

A market analysis by Futuresource Consulting predicts mobile games will draw worldwide revenues of $10 billion in 2014, up from the firm's current projections of nearly $6 billion in annual revenues for the space. The projection, which comes as part of the firm's newly released Mobile Games Report, also predicts that games sold on smartphone digital storefronts like Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace will dominate mobile game revenues in the future. In fact, smartphone digital storefronts are believed to be rising from 40 percent share of today's mobile games market to a 95 percent in 2014. While the analysts see the freemium model of zero-cost apps and in-game item purchases growing in the near term, the report predicts ad-funded games on mobile devices will "start to gain more traction as well" in the longer-term. Last year, a report from DFC Intelligence saw the mobile games market growing to a slightly higher $11.7 billion in 2014. Mobile gaming companies have been the subject of intense business interest in recent months, with Japanese social gaming firm DeNA recently purchasing Rolando developer Ngmoco for $400 million and EA buying Angry Birds publisher Chillingo for a reported price just under $20 million.