Indians spend 7 hours a week on mobile games, women drive adoption

New Delhi: Indians are now spending around 7 hours in a week on playing games on their mobiles and the duration has increased among majority (53 per cent) since the lockdown began early this year and women are fast adopting mobile gaming in the country, a new report said on Tuesday.

Interestingly, 15 per cent of the gamers switched to paid mobile gaming apps during the lockdown while freemium gaming apps increased by 8 per cent.

According to the CyberMedia Research (CMR) report, mobile gaming has increased among three in every five serious gamers, with four hours being average duration of increase since the lockdown began in the country.

While men play mobile games mostly in the evening (33 per cent), women play mobile games mostly in the late nights (28 per cent).

Indian men mostly play action/adventure (71 per cent) and first-persons shooter (63 per cent) games on their smartphones. The ‘Call of Duty Mobile’ and the ‘Garena Free Fire’ are popular first-person shooter games.

Among women, the most popular type of the game is puzzles (65 per cent), followed by multiplayer gamers (56 per cent).

“Mobile gaming in India is driven by an array of gamer personas, ranging from the serious to the hyper-casual gamers. They differ from each other in terms of the time spent, the genres played, the places played at, and most importantly, their outlook to mobile gaming,” said Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR.

Six out of 10 serious gamers tend to purchase gaming apps, while others tend to use freemium apps. Among women, four in every nine users purchase gaming app.

“Across the board, three in every five gamers believe that mobile gaming enabled them in overcoming social isolation during the lockdown period”.

Indians tend to play mobile games based on family and friend recommendations.

On an average, Indians have seven games installed on their smartphones. Of these, there are at least four games they play regularly.

“Among mobile gamers, the top three pain points include phone heating, fast battery discharge and slow network. Going forward, mobile gamers expect more from their smartphones: more RAM, better battery life, increased storage and powerful SoCs,” said Amit Sharma, Analyst- Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR.

Qualcomm (65 per cent) and MediaTek (61 per cent) are the top two brands that Indian gamers are aware of.

“However, it is interesting to note that more serious gamers show preference for MediaTek (68 per cent) over Qualcomm (66 per cent),” said the report that covered 1,124 mobile gamers in the 16-35 age group.