The late-2000s mobile gaming market was dominated by Nintendo’s NDS with 70% of the market share. But the king of handheld is being overrun by smartphone systems, IOS and Android, grabbing market share up to 58% as Nintendo plummet to 36% and Sony down to 7%. How could Nintendo lose to smartphone in just 2 years? The fact is smartphone are grabbing non-intensive gamers away from Nintendo. During the late-2000s, smartphones weren’t as popular and it was expensive for many consumers to purchase. Gradually the large segment of non-intensive gamers had to purchase a Nintendo gaming device to play casual game such as Mario Cart. As smartphone are more common and cheap, Apple and Android offers different variety of games that allow consumers to choose from at a low cost. These inexpensive games encourage all smartphone users to play causally without paying an excessive markup of 40 dollars per game and a hardware that costs 200 dollars. Now most cellphone owners are smartphone users, they could enjoy gaming experience at a cost as low as a dollar each game.
Looking at the market share in the future, I believe that smartphone will continue to dominate the casual segment of the gaming market. With our technological advances, Nintendo may not hold on the segment for much longer.