Downloads from BuzzCity’s free mobile gaming platform Djuzz, grew by a staggering 295% in June

Global mobile media company, BuzzCity, delivered more than 8.3 million games to 14.8 million unique users across the world through its free mobile gaming portal Djuzz during June, with South Africa in fourth place with 656,461 downloads – a significant jump from 142, 668 downloads in May.

The top categories in South Africa were sports (40%) with the football games like Footballz 2009, 2008 World Soccer and Footballz Africa edition, dominating. This was followed by movies & TV (20%), and arcade (10%); while the top devices were Nokia (32%), Samsung (13%) and Sony Ericsson (10%).

Globally, this is an increase of 295% in downloads and a 335% increase in unique visitors to the portal.

Djuzz, which launched six months ago, currently has 5,200 games available for download, spread across 29 categories and created by 70 game developers and publishers. The Djuzz Catalogue, BuzzCity’s free application store solution, has attracted more than 200 partners to date including operators, handset manufacturers, games developers and media houses globally. In order to meet demand from users around the world, the Djuzz interface is now available in a range of languages including English, French, Thai, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia and Chinese and is soon to launch in Arabic, Spanish and Vietnamese.

The Top 10 games downloaded during June are:

KF Lai, CEO of BuzzCity, said, “The impact of the World Cup on mobile games downloads across the world has been significant. Footballz 2009 had fallen out of the Top 10 but made a comeback this month with high downloads from users in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and the US. The seasonality of games is something that developers can take advantage of to boost the number of downloads for their games.”

Since the start of the World Cup, a renewed interest in all things football has been very much in evidence with month-on-month traffic to football-themed games rising significantly. Prior to the event beginning, football games including 2008 World Soccer, Footballz, Euro Football, Footballz 2009 and Footballz Africa Edition averaged approximately a 64% growth in monthly downloads but between May and June this grew to an average of 709%. Apart from the World Cup, other sporting events such as The Indian Premier League, World Twenty20 and various international cricket tournaments in the first six months of the year also saw increased downloads of cricket games (20-20 Cricket and Cricket League of Champions) by surfers in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

In addition to the June metrics, BuzzCity has also analysed key statistics and trends from the Djuzz portal since its launch six months ago. Since January 2010, Djuzz has served 12.8 million games to a total of 22.6 million unique visitors and average daily users of the portal have now reached 490,000.

Over the six month period approximately 25 games have breached the 100,000 download mark, 50 received more than 50,000 downloads and more then 980 games were downloaded in excess of 1,000 times. On average four out of every 10 visitors to Djuzz downloads a game – a conversion rate of 43%, which rises to approximately 60% in Turkey, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Since January 2010, the most popular games categories have remained largely unchanged with Action and Adventure accounting for 27% of games downloads, Racing accounting for 15% and Sports coming in third place with 12%. However, there are distinct variations in user preference across the globe. In the UK and US gamers exhibited a marked preference for cards and casino games whereas South Africa and Nigeria maintained interest in sports games.

KF Lai, continued, “Through our monthly reports which examine consumer trends in mobile, we are able to provide advertisers and developers with strategic advice on how they can successfully interact with consumers to drive high traffic volumes and downloads. The sustainability of popular games depend on a few factors such as the ability to be accessed across multiple devices - both feature phones and smartphones - good graphics, good brand recall and easy gameplay. Following these basic rules will enable you to create a product that holds consumer interest and ultimately becomes profitable.”

To view the full report, including the mid-year analysis, please visit the BuzzCity at http://www.buzzcity.com/l/djuzz/Djuzz-Mobile-Gaming-Metrics-Jun10.pdf.