For many years only a very small minority of the world's 1bn+ mobile phone users played ?paid-for? games on their handsets. During 2003 and 2004 however this began to change. Juniper Research?s estimate for the mobile games market in 2004 was just above S$3bn, with a sharp rise forecast for the next five years. We believe the market will approach $18.5bn by 2009.

While the majority (just under two-thirds) of this revenue will be derived from downloadable games, a sizeable amount will be derived from either game rentals (to try the game for a limited period to determine whether it is worth purchasing), or increasingly, from subscriptions to online multiplayer games networks.