Social gaming is predicted to become a multi-billion dollar industry by the year 2019, largely due to the prevalence of smartphones and tablets.
Social gaming is one of the fastest growing markets in the world, and according to a new report by international research company, Research and Markets, it will be worth $17.4 billion by 2019. Much of social gaming's meteoric rise can be attributed to the widespread purchase of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices over the past few years.
Traditional Gambling Companies & Social Gaming
Given the industry's potential, many traditional gambling companies also want a piece of the action. In 2011, Caesars Interactive Entertainment acquired social casino games developer Playtika, a small start-up, for $90 million. While the large sum was surprising, Caesars was actually making a smart investment, one that would allow it to achieve its aspiration of becoming "the number one in casino and social games on Facebook."
In 2012, IGT, the world's largest developer of gaming machines, acquired Doubledown, the world's largest virtual casino, for over $400 million.
Mobile Technology
Research and Markets concludes its report by predicting that the use of mobile technology will continue to increase over the next five years, which will in turn drive the expansion of the social gaming market at a compound annual growth rate of 16.1%.
The report states, "The growth of social games can be attributed to the growing demand of smartphones and tablets in the market. The ever-increasing demand of the mobile devices has made the social game developers rework their strategies and they are now designing games that can be played on these devices. The growth in the Internet subscribers has also contributed to the growth of the social game users. It is expected that in 2014 one-third of Internet users are likely to take to social gaming. Another factor resulting in the growth social gaming market is free cost of the games on the net."
Currently, approximately 200 million people play social games online, and that figure is expected to double by 2019. Of the amount of time spent using social media, social gaming customers spent more than 50% on playing games.
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