FreshNetworks Blog

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A new report from Juniper Research has found that an increase in social gaming will push the global market for virtual goods bought from mobile social media services from $3 billion this year to $4.6 billion by 2016.

While this increase is largely attributed to a sharp rise in smartphone adoption, it’s interesting to note is that  sales of virtual goods via mobile platforms are really  flourishing in Japan and China.

This is not really that surprising though, given that  Chinese social gaming companies like  Happy Elements has the ability to raise millions of dollars in funding to not only expand their reach in Asia, but also bring their social games to western markets.

Social gaming can benefit brands in a number of ways and increasing tablet usage is expected to provide further growth in the social gaming market, particularly in the west,  as tablets offer a significantly better user experience for social gaming than smartphones.

However, any brand looking to invest in social virtual goods should be aware of app store payments in the likes of Apple App Store,  Android Market and BlackBerry App World. Any company wishing to sell virtual goods from within their own app risk losing a whopping 30% of the payment value to the app store.

So while virtual goods provide a way of monetising mobile social media and social gaming, brands need to find a way to avoid app stores taking a slice of their revenue.

Other key findings from Juniper’s report include:

• The spend on advertising targeted at tablets is expected to account for almost half of total mobile social media advertising spend by 2016.
• The Far East & China will continue to account for the biggest share of mobile social media revenues, followed by North America.

The way we consume information is fundamentally shifting towards an ‘always-on’ world where our mobile phones are the first port of call for access to the web.

Techcrunch stated that in February 2011, just under 14% of access to their site was on a mobile device -  up 702% from February 2009. Add this to the fact that Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, recently said that 40% of all Tweets are now composed on mobile devices (up from around 20% in 2010) and we begin to get a pretty clear picture of the way mobile is impacting social media.

Indeed, more research has suggested that the number of people accessing social media services from their phones in the US alone will rise by 20% annually between now and 2015.

The implications of this shift for the social media industry are huge. With consumption increasingly becoming mobile-centric it is vital to design campaigns and sites around this format. People should be able to engage with brands from within the mobile environment with as little need to go ‘online’ as possible.

The social web is connected to the real world even more ; people are Tweeting, using Facebook, and taking film and photos on the go more than ever, and they are sharing them live and in real-time from portable, mobile devices.