iGB Intelligence reports Social Gaming report | Page 14

Part 1 – SOCIAL CASINO

Worldwide smartphone operating system market
share (based on unit sales) in 2015
Other
2.5%
iOS
15.9%

that social casino accounts for 40% of the top US iOS
games. Meanwhile, SuperData predicts that social
casino revenues on mobile will eclipse those of desktop
games during 2016, with mobile earnings forecast to
climb 11% to about US$1.4bn. About three-quarters of
social casino gamers play on a smartphone.
Of course, mobile isn’t without its persistent
challenges. For starters, hundreds of different
smartphones and tablets means the speed of game and
content deployment has significantly decreased, which
means an uplift in QA testing is required to release the
product into the market. And, of course, the main app
emporiums – Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store
– are hyper-competitive and saturated in gamblingrelated searches, which means app store optimisation
(ASO) skills have become paramount in the battle for
organic downloads.
Then there is the obvious challenge of creating
games for devices with limited screen real estate,
varying processing power and battery life. This
fragmentation is especially pronounced on Android,
which is by far the dominant operating system and
social casino’s largest audience. While Android
dominates in terms of player volume, Apple device
owners tend to spend more and have a higher LTV.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike on iOS, the Play
store prohibits RMG apps, which means it’s a slightly
less crowded marketplace for social casino apps.

Facebook’s diminishing role
A key reason social gaming first exploded was down
to social networking juggernaut Facebook allowing
social games on its site – for a 30% cut of transactions.
Facebook’s audience reach is unparalleled: as of March

10

Android
81.6%

Source: Gartner

Average number of apps used per day according to
US smartphone owners
43%

28%
20%

8%
1%
1-3

4-6

7-10

10+

None

Source: Millward Brown Digital

2016, it boasted 1.09 billion DAUs and 1.65 billion
MAUs. While much of social casino’s focus has lurched
towards mobile, that doesn’t mean Facebook Canvas
has become a redundant platform when it comes to
game distribution, marketing and user acquisition
(UA). Furthermore, the write-once-and-deploy nature
of creating games for Facebook means developers
are able to experiment, iterate and A/B test games
much more easily than mobile versions, partly due

iGaming Business Social Media & Mobile Betting Report