The 800lb gorillas of the mobile games world are being outgunned on the iPhone App Store by indie developers.
At least, that's according to research published by mobile analytics firm Flurry.
It's been crunching data from the App Store's Top 25 paid games chart between September 2008 and July this year, and categorising games according to whether they were developed by established mobile publishers, or 'new' developers.
The topline result? 45% of games that broke into the Top 25 were from established firms, while 55% were from new indie developers.
“With speculation that more incumbent mobile gaming companies are investing more heavily in the iPhone platform, we would have expected to see an increase in the number of top slots held by established companies over the last several months,” says Flurry. “However, new developers continue to rank well.”.
The company admits that one reason for this is that the App Store's Top 25 chart is dominated by cheaper games, which tend to be from indie outfits.
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Analysis based on revenues rather than sales volumes might favour the established firms more.
However, the research is more evidence that publishers like EA Mobile and Gameloft, who've traditionally dominated operator portals, aren't having things entirely their own way on iPhone.
