Tablet sales are sluggish. Dan Gallagher writing in The Wall Street Journal cited IDC figures showing that tablet sales grew only 8.4% year-over-year for the second quarter, vs. 58.5% for the same period a year earlier. Nevertheless, wrote Gallagher of the leading tablet supplier, “Apple has made clear it isn't giving up on tablets. Nor should it.”
Meanwhile, Juniper Research predicted that by 2019 worldwide revenues from tablet games will reach $13.3 billion—a threefold rise on the 2014 figure of $3.6 billion. That growth will be fuelled by several factors, including improved storage capacity of tablets, better graphical capabilities, increasing mobile broadband penetration, and consumers’ preference for convenience and ubiquity.
It's not clear that the growth of tablet game revenues will drive tablet sales, unless deficiencies in current generation tablets' memory and graphics performance prompt gamers to upgrade frequently. But growth in cloud-based storage and processing may make upgrades less important.
Nevertheless, the growth in games could be good news for developers. The report, “Mobile & Handheld Games: Discover, Monetise, Advertise 2014–2019,” predicted the next year could be critical for smaller, independent developers. And it also predictd strong growth in monetization of smartphone games across emerging markets, with carrier billing deployments increasingly facilitating storefront payments.
Monetization could be key. Gallagher in the Journal wrote, “Morgan Stanley estimates that Apple's platform generates about $1 of revenue per user a month, with gross margins that are now accretive to Apple's overall margin. This means the bigger end-goal for Apple is likely going to be drawing more revenue out of users, rather than just relying on design tweaks to boost hardware sales.”
And as previously reported, Apple is working with IBM to promote iPhones and iPads for business.