Nintendo Losing Marketshare to Smartphones/Tablets

With sales of its Wii U struggling, there is more bad news for Nintendo in a recent survey released by New York-based NPD Group. The survey shows that kids and teenagers are turning away from traditional portable gaming devices and relying more on their tablets and handsets for entertainment. With tablets and smartphones now having better screen resolution, easy to navigate…

 

By Mike Wheeler

With sales of its Wii U struggling, there is more bad news for Nintendo in a recent survey released by New York-based NPD Group.

 

The survey shows that kids and teenagers are turning away from traditional portable gaming devices and relying more on their tablets and handsets for entertainment.

 

With tablets and smartphones now having better screen resolution, easy to navigate user interfaces, good battery life, and an almost endless supply of gaming apps, Nintendo – and to a lesser extent Sony with its Vita – have a battle on their hands maintaining their current marketshare.

 

So what do the numbers say? More than 4,200 children were surveyed aged between 2 and 17, and the company found a 15 percent increase of kids played games on their iPhone –  from 11 percent in 2011 to 26 percent in 2013. The trend was in reverse for Nintendo, with the numbers stating that 25 percent of kids used their DS consoles, compared to 37 percent two years ago.

 

Add to that the 21 percent of kids play games on Apple's iPad, 19 percent utilise their iPod Touch and 23 percent do that same on their Android smartphones, it’s not hard to see why Nintendo should be worried. The above results suggest that kids use more than one smartphone or tablet, but that still doesn’t take away the most alarming result of all for the Japanesee-based company in that one of its hero products – the 3DS – is only is being used by nine percentof young people 30 months after its release.

 

More than half of respondents – 53 percent – said they were spending more time on their slate or smartphone compared to the previous year. More worryingly for parents teenagers are now spending up to seven hours a week playing games on smart devices, up from five hours in 2011.