Selective statistics
Smartphone app analytics house Flurry has published a report revealing that social gaming on Apple's mobile OS - iOS - is already getting the kinds of audience numbers associated with the most popular TV programmes in the States.
As the chart below shows, Flurry has compared its own figures for total iOS social gaming per day with Nielsen's TV ratings. American Idol tops the list with over 23 million viewers, while iOS averaged 19 million users in a day.
Flurry entitled the supporting blog post "Is iPhone the next American Idol?" and seeks to pose an intriguing question about the evolution of media consumption and what this means for advertisers. But there are many flaws to that take on these figures.
Firstly, as Flurry points out itself, the iOS figures are based on just a 20 percent penetration of the app market. Does that mean the figure should be five times higher? Not if the 20 percent Flurry does cover are the most popular ones.
Secondly the iOS figures cover an entire day, while the TV episodes cover a short and defined period of time, so we're not comparing like for like. And lastly, the two media are far from mutually exclusive. We would guess that many people indulge in social gaming on their mobile devices while sat in front of the TV, so there is probably a lot of overlap between these figures.
That's not to say Flurry doesn't have a point about the shift in consumer behaviour and what this means for advertisers, but these figures alone only paint a small part of the picture.
