BlackBerry making headway as device of choice for mobile gamers: Djuzz Mobile Gaming Metrics

Global mobile media company BuzzCity releases its latest monthly Djuzz Mobile Gaming Metrics report (from December 2010 data) which analyses the traffic and usage of its mobile gaming portal Djuzz. The report also highlights trends in mobile gaming over the past eleven months since Djuzz launched. In less than one year of operations, Djuzz has delivered nearly 50 million games.

Djuzz delivered more than 9 million games for December alone, which was an 18% increase. During this month there were 120,000 unique daily visitors on Djuzz (up by 9% from November) and each one generates at least four downloads.

Although local "whitebox" devices have made an impact in the last quarter of 2010, Nokia still dominates the marketplace: 15 of the top 20 devices in 2010 were Nokia and 49% of all downloads used Nokia devices. Whitebox devices on the other hand have slowed down towards the end of the year; taking 10% of the total downloads for the year. Other OEMs such as BlackBerry, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG continue to hold on via their increased presence in several countries such as United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and Ghana.

In fact as Djuzz becomes increasingly popular in developed markets, BlackBerry proves itself to be one of the devices that are more and more used by gamers for free mobile entertainment. Last year, Blackberry took 0.5% (288,000) of overall downloads and continues to grow, gaining a strong foothold on several key mobile markets such as United Kingdom, United States and Indonesia. This growth can be attributed to RIM's launch of its AppWorld and support for HTML5 (WebWorks) last year.

Downloads via BlackBerry increased three-fold during the second half of the year and this can be mainly attributed to increased distribution via the Djuzz Catalogue (launched in mid-May) and the increase in BlackBerry games made available on the 3rd quarter.

Dr KF Lai, CEO of BuzzCity says: "Mobile gaming is going from strength to strength. We expect 2011 to be an exciting time for the mobile gaming community ' from developers through to brands who use games to reach their audiences."

The top five countries which have been most active on Djuzz are India, Indonesia, United States, Nigeria and South Africa. Findings from the report suggest awareness campaigns improve downloads and this includes coverage of major events e.g. sporting events, movie launches and campaigns related to major holidays.