Mobile Games Revenues to Surpass $11 billion Globally by 2015 as In-Game Purchases Overtake those of Pay-per-Download, says Juniper Research

A new report published by Juniper Research forecasts that revenues from in-game purchases will overtake the traditional pay-per-download model as the primary source of monetising mobile games by 2013. With Apple's in-app billing mechanism showing the way forward, total end-user revenues will surpass $11 billion annually by 2015, nearly double what they were in 2009 ($6bn).
An increasing number of games are being offered free at the point of purchase, in order to garner attention, with in-game purchases – which include extra gaming levels or gameplay items – being utilised by developers and publishers to monetise the game once the user has been given a taste of what the game has to offer. However, discoverability remains a problem for developers and publishers on some app stores, given that many now contain 100,000s of applications, the majority of which are mobile games.
According to Mobile Games report, " Discoverability can be a "chicken and egg" problem: high downloads lead to prominence, but achieving a high number of downloads is largely dependent on already being prominent. Consequently, a small minority of games achieve very high downloads, whilst the vast majority achieve very small download figures."
Nevertheless, Juniper Research's report finds that the mobile games industry is in a much healthier state than it was when the last edition was published. Apple's iPhone/App Store combination has set the benchmark, with a higher share of revenue for developers, and development platforms which take advantage of advancements in handset technology, as discussed in the report.