Android or iOS - The future of mobile games

These days most people wouldn’t be able to get by without a mobile device of some sort. Many people no longer play exclusively on websites or social networks, but also use smartphones because their mobile phone is always within reach.

Although December is usually known as a slow month for the mobile industry, December of 2011 proved to be "a veritable gold rush," said the co-founder and creative director of GameDuell, Michael Kalkowski, about the start-up scene. At Christmas alone 6.8 million new devices with iOS or Android were activated.

1 Billion App Downloads per Month

During the month of December, app downloads saw a huge increase. A total of 6.04 million apps were downloaded from the iOS store per day in December. This resulted in the average number of downloads within a year being almost doubled.

It’s not only the mobile operating system from Apple, which runs like clockwork, but also Google's Android system that is displaying strong market growth. One billion apps were downloaded from the Android Market in December and since the launch of the Android operating system in late 2008, 10 billion applications have been downloaded in total - according to the Google Blog):

Top App Category: Games

Games occupy a large part of downloaded applications. Therefore, it is not surprising that games are the top application category for iOS, Android and Facebook. Games are also among the category of apps that the user is extensively engaged in after downloading and will not simply go unused on the smartphone.

In the United States, it was discovered that nearly half of the time spent by users of mobile applications was on games.

Android on the Fast Track

In the past, developers and customers most often chose a mobile device made by Apple and thus for the iOS. But times are changing and more and more consumers are inspired to purchase Android mobile devices.

On average over the last three months, there were 500,000 iOS and 700,000 Android phones sold daily; that's 200,000 more Android smartphones sold per day than there were about half a year ago.

GameDuell experienced this trend first hand. At Christmas, accelerated by the new Galaxy Nexus, GameDuell games for Android were installed an additional 100,000 times.

The British firm Ovum, analyzed the latest developments in the mobile market in great detail and came to the conclusion that later this year Android will overtake iOS as the mobile platform with the majority of users. This trend was also confirmed by the market research company IHC. They predict that in three years, nearly 60% of smartphone owners will use an Android device.

GameDuell games for Android | GameDuell games for iOS

Jobs at GameDuell

It is a logical step that GameDuell plans to offer more and more games on iOS and Android. With expansion in progress, our Mobile team needs more hands!

Vacancies in the Mobile Team

Read next: Why cross-platform is games' greatest innovation

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