Gaming is making its way out of your parents’ basement and into your parents’ hands. With commuter trains and shopping lines throughout the world now filled with adults playing games on smartphones and tablets, it’s easy to feel as though we are on the brink of having every commuter somehow required to play Candy Crush before, after (and sometimes during) each workday.
What might be more surprising, though, are the gamers who are smashing through the glass ceiling of their devices: women in their forties now make up the majority of gamers on the most popular devices.
A new Q3 2013 Portable Gaming Report from App Annie and IDC has revealed that Android smartphones and Apple iPad are the most popular mobile devices for gaming in the U.S. and that both are being used mainly by 40-something females.
Another interesting statistic is that among mobile/handheld gaming devices, Kindle Fire is more popular than Android tablets using Google Play.
The battle between Amazon, Android and Apple has been pretty fierce among mobile gaming consoles. Amazon and Android have made significant gains by pricing their devices lower than Apple. And with Kindle Fire stepping up as a serious contender in the tablet industry, it’s interesting that Apple is still going with their usual high price point ($499 for the new iPad Air) when Kindle Fire runs as low as $139 and as high as $379, still over $100 less than the cost of an iPad Air.
Apple enthusiasts will argue that Amazon is only pricing their devices so low because they just want you to buy from Amazon’s media store and sell your data. But with the price of Kindle Fire so low, will users care?
Edited by
Alisen Downey
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