Smartphones again platform number 1 in Germany

There is a lot of gambling in Germany. But what has clearly changed over the years. In the meantime, the trend has been clearly pointing in the direction of mobile for some time – smartphones have once again taken the lead.

This is now from a new one Message by game, the association of the German gaming industry. In cooperation with the market research companies GfK and data.ai, figures for 2021 have now been published. They show that a total of 23.5 million people in Germany are playing on their smartphones – that’s 900,000 more than the year before. That’s enough for first place again. They ended up in pole position for the first time in 2017.

Behind smartphones: growth also for tablets and consoles

The fact that mobile gaming is particularly popular is also underscored by the growth in tablet use: 800,000 new players have been added to this platform. Together with the smartphones, gambling on the go has a total of 27.3 million users.

There are also clear reasons for this, as game mentions. The technology required for this is easily accessible, or many already have it. There is a wide range of titles, many of which are free, and the ubiquity of mobile in everyday life would make gaming a side activity.

However, the console segment in second place can also record an upswing: with 17.8 million people, a total of 800,000 new people were added in 2021. It overtook the PC market in 2020, and who knows, there may be more to come as PS5 and Xbox Series X|S availability increases.

Decline in PC, chip crisis aggravating factor

The demand currently exceeds the supply of consoles. There are various reasons for this: The corona pandemic caused severe delivery bottlenecks, especially at the launch of the new generation of consoles, which continue to this day.

In addition, because of this and other events such as the Ukraine war, there is a crisis in global chip production. Devices cannot be produced and then delivered as quickly and in large numbers.

Once again, the losers in the statistical evaluation are the PCs. The platform lost 900,000 active players, and “only” 14.3 million people are said to be playing on the classic desktop computer. In addition to the problems in production and logistics already mentioned, rising prices for graphics cards, among other things, are also deterring customers.

Despite challenges: German games economy continues to grow

Overall, the German games industry is in better shape than ever: After record growth in 2020, another 17 percent increase in sales was recorded in 2021 – the business with hardware and software as well as fees for online services generated 9.8 billion euros around.

In games alone, growth was 19 percent at around 5.4 billion euros thanks to increased in-game and in-app purchases. The hardware area rose by 18 percent to around 3.6 billion euros, fueled by sales of consoles and accessories.