They were invented to stay in touch with work and friends wherever you are, but mobile phones are not that simple anymore. First they started to receive emails, now it’s games, in a marketplace worth billions.
It feels like a concert full of fans in love with celebrities. But passion here is for gaming.
It’s an industry sky-rocketing in value. The biggest growth: games for smart-phones.
This is "Imangi Studios". From their one-bedroom studio in Washington DC Imangi Studios was born.
With a staff of just eight, the company’s taking on the big software developers.
Their best performer, Temple Run, has been download 500 million times.
“Everybody has a mobile phone and sometimes you’re bored or you need something to do, and there are all these great games and apps that people are being exposed to so it’s really opened up gaming to a whole new community of people who wouldn’t consider themselves gamers.”Keith Shepherd, CEO and founder of Imangi Studios.
Researchers Digi-Capital say 43 per cent of apps downloaded on mobile phones, are games. By 2016, they estimate the mobile gaming industry could be worth 48 billion US dollars.
Mobile games are also helping to reduce privacy. No discs, no retail shops, and most importantly -- no huge price tags poor young gamers are trying to avoid.
None of these gamers will even pause and say hello to me they’re all so pre-occupied with what’s going on on their screens and the creaters that are set up here are loving it. The industry now makes more money every year than Hollywood films do, and with mobile phones there’s a whole new audience.
Think about China itself, there’ll be 500-million smart phone users here by the end of the year, that’s a huge potential market.A market, that gaming experts say China could lead.
Software marketing companies now come here, to find new ideas, and publicise them overseas.Devices that didn’t exist a few years ago, now changing our daily entertainment.