From my perspective, mobile gaming "caught on" around the time the first iPhone was released around 7 years ago.

There was already a big market for it on Symbian and J2ME, but the quirks of those platforms, and the relative difficulty in publishing and getting payed stopped it from really taking off.

Finally there was a performant platform that was easy to get started with and easy to publish for, and you could reach the _whole_ market with just a single build, and most of those people already had their credit card attached to their itunes account, so they where only a click and a password away from paying you for your work, so a lot more people could do it as an actual living.

I obviously like mobile gaming, I think the limitations are interesting, and that the input methods open doors to new ways to game.

It's not the same as PC and console gaming, and probably never will be. But that is mainly because of how and when people tend to play mobile games, not because developers are lazy

Although be careful - iphone 7 years ago couldn't even run apps, so that isn't true Apple got a lot more developer support when it could and it's easy to think the payment advantage as helping, but then they got that extra developer support long after other platform owners started up their application payment sites, so it wasn't really that (I still see companies support the minority of iphone users ignoring even the 80% of Android users, though it's getting better). Perhaps it was more that the media gave ridiculous amounts of hype to Apple whilst ignoring everything else. Perhaps it was more that iphones were newer to the US market which seemed to have much poorer mobile technology, and many software companies are based in the US. Who knows. I'm not sure what you mean about a single build for the whole market - there was an advantage of only having one model to develop for, but the downside of that is problems as more models are released and technology is improved - indeed, with loads of IOS devices, of multiple different sizes, multiple different resolutions and aspect ratios no longer applies, and it's worse as the platform started out with the expectation that there would only be "one thing to code for" - you're better off with either breaking compatibility every few years (consoles) or always supporting a range of devices (just about every operating system out there, mobile or not).

Mobile gaming, like most things in technology, is something that's grown with time, with many companies and products contributing, and there are many different perspectives. From my perspective my first experience with mobile games was in 2005 with my Motorola phone, though I didn't get into development until 2010 with Nokia/Symbian using Qt. I wouldn't say I really care for mobile phone games at all though, preferring to play on my laptop, or very occasionally my Nexus 7.

There are a lot more people running mobile games today than in 2007, so there's been vast growth since then (most of which coming from Android phones). Before there was Symbian and especially J2ME. Even before that though in the 1990s we had mobile consoles like the Gameboy (which was harder/impossible for indie developers to develop for, but then this thread was about the demand for games, not who can write them).

I've got a game programming book where a "history of gaming" section lists mobile gaming as the penultimate section. This book was published in 2003.

I think its interesting how powerful some of the devices are actually getting. Most mobile devices are not really getting pushed that much with games like angry birds or temple run so you don't really get to see it.

I still see companies support the minority of iphone users ignoring the 80% of Android users

There are two reasons for this:

1. iOS users spend more money. Thet have their card attached to their account and they use it.

2. Android is a lot more fragmented. I don't just mean the screen sizes which is easy to cope with. I mean things like different implementations of the graphics drivers from various manufacturers so that two devices with the same GPU have completly different performance.

I think its interesting how powerful some of the devices are actually getting. Most mobile devices are not really getting pushed that much with games like angry birds or temple run so you don't really get to see it.

The devices have a lot of power on paper, and certain development companies have been able to utilize this power. But we are still a far ways off. ARM and mobile GPUs isn't near as good as anything x86 with integrated graphics yet.

Although be careful - iphone 7 years ago couldn't even run apps, so that isn't true

Actually, you could jailbreak your phone from pretty early, and even buy apps for it :)

The founders of the company I work at started selling games for iphone even before the App Store opened... Apple wasn't even mad :)

But ok, I was a bit careless counting from release, I should have counted from release of the app store.

Because that was a big thing, and totally game changing for the mobile industry, and 3rd party developers.

And very surprising no-one did before Apple. I remember asking the guy responsible for games at Nokia, sometime around 2006, about why they didn't make it easier for small guys to release and sell games and apps for their platform, but he totally dismissed what he called "homebrew" and was only interested in bringing big name engines and publishers aboard, and obviously didn't understand what I meant...

There was many in-phone stores and download services, but that was just the problem... There were many, too fragmented, and there were no one place to release to reach every device running that platform. It was hard to reach customers.

I'm not talking about why iphone became popular (I have my opinons, but they are not relevant here) I'm just talking about what got the mobile games market to really kick off, and in my mind there is no doubt that the app store was a big factor.

Suddenly a huge market opened with lots of actually paying customers, hungry for new and fresh content, and with none of the headaches of extreme fragmentation in Symbian and J2Me worlds. You think Android is bad? You complain of different screensizes? you have no idea how it was...

There are two reasons for this:

1. iOS users spend more money. Thet have their card attached to their account and they use it.

2. Android is a lot more fragmented. I don't just mean the screen sizes which is easy to cope with. I mean things like different implementations of the graphics drivers from various manufacturers so that two devices with the same GPU have completly different performance.

Maybe it is just the kinds of games we make but probably 65% of our sales are on Android.

Nearly everybody has a smartphone now. Gaming is "mainstream" now but that doesn't mean everybody has time (or wants) to spend hours sitting in front of a computer to play a real game. It makes sense that people whip out the phone for five minutes to play Temple Run while they are waiting for a train.

Also looking historically, Mobile started to go big back in the days of Palm.

My first modern mobile app was for Palm devices back in 1998.

For phones you had the Nokia family lines had S30, S40, and other product lines, but they had small screens such as QVGA 240x320 resolution and even 96x95. Yes, people actually used the 96x95 screens for web browsing, and sadly many people today are stupidly making mobile sites based on the recommendations from that era.

For non-phones, Palm started to drop in market share around 2002 as WinCE devices like the HP iPaq lines took off, with the hx4700 and Dell Axim x30/x50 lines looking very similar to today's modern devices. People complained about how these big devices struggled to fit in your pocket, calling the screen sizes lavish and unnecessary. These had relatively high-density 640x480+ 4" screens, wifi, bluetooth, video out, often dual SDHC and CF card slots, and starting with Dell's x51 even 3D graphics processors. The X50 series used the same audio processors as the early ipod devices, and I used mine with two cards (4GB SD and 4GB CF card) to store music and videos on. I already had one so I didn't need an ipod, and I would pass it back to my kids where they watched rips of their favorite DVDs; we could plug it in to the van's video system and a USB plug in the lighter kept it charged up. At its peak I think I had around 80 full-length movies on two cards for the kids to watch during long drives.

The only thing they were missing was sim cards, which was pointed out on many review sites as a suggestion for both HP and Dell, but neither took the bait.

Many people back in 2004-2005 were constantly asking when they were going to merge. You can search the XDA Developers site (it was actually devoted to the real XDA mobiles that ran Windows CE back then) to see some of the discussions and email feedback from Dell and HP as they were critical of the idea. They ignored the profitable ideas until Apple merged them in 2007.