Gameloft rising fast amongst top 10 iOS publishers

Gameloft rising fast amongst top 10 iOS publishers
Innovation

Top iOS Publishers by Free Downloads

Gameloft- Top iOS Publishers by Revenue
Top iOS Publishers by Revenue

Gameloft, one of France’s most famous games industry success stories, has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in mobile gaming.  According to App Annie’s October index, Gameloft jumped 8 places to #4 in the ranking of top app publishers by free download on iOS and is holding steady at #4 amongst game publishers in terms of iOS revenue.  As iOS is increasingly dominated by Japanese and US publishers, particularly on the revenue side, this is an impressive feat.
Gameloft- Top Google Play Publishers by Revenue
Top Google Play Publishers by Revenue

The Google Play side tells a bit of a different story.  Games, in general, appear to have a much stronger hold on iOS than Google Play as 8 of the most downloaded apps on iOS are games while on Google Play only 2 game publishers appear in the top 10.  Amongst game companies, east Asian publishers have shown an impressive capacity to monetize on Android as 8 of the top grossing game studios are Japanese or South Korean.  Gameloft, who looks to have lost a bit of ground over the past month, and Zynga are the only non-Asia based publishers that appear in the top 10.
Gameloft appear to be on a bit of a roll lately, having successfully made the transition to freemium and paymium models for many of their titles, which they started using in March 2011.  Not only have they been having a great deal of success on the download and iOS revenue sides of things, but their overall revenues have grown substantially this year (as reported in gamesindustry.biz), having posted a 37% revenue jump in the third quarter to €55.4 million and a 9-month growth of 128% to €150.6 million.  Much of this growth has been driven by mobile games (smartphones and tablets), which saw 124% combined growth for the company and made up 56% of Gameloft’s sales.  In-app purchase have been such a driver of their mobile revenue growth that they now account for 60% of their smartphone revenues.  Having been around since the first tech boom, Gameloft is a great example of a company that seems to know exactly how to pivot as the industry evolves.