Smartphone cost and storage is affecting gamers in India, says a Study

If you are playing a game on your smartphone, the internal memory of your device becomes an important factor in determining how the phone behaves overall when it is put under some stress, a new study has revealed. A study carried out by MAUJ Mobile, a domestic mobile media company, found that of the total users who participated in the gamer survey, about 70 per cent used a mobile phone with an internal memory of 16 GB or less, with about 40 per cent having an internal device storage of 8 GB or lesser. “Even among the gamers who use an external SD card, more than 30 per cent just have an additional 8 GB of storage space, while 20 per cent of gamers do not have an external memory card on their devices,” the research added. The researchers found that most Indian gamers have five or less games installed on their mobile devices at a given point of time. “Low cost devices coupled with low internal storage capacities on devices of Indian mobile gamers do not allow a gamer to keep a lot of games on the device since phone performance continually degrades owing to low device space,” the study noted. The cost of the mobile phones proved an important factor for the performance of games. The analysis indicated that about 30 per cent of the gamers use a smartphone that costs Rs 5,000 or less. “Devices that cost less than Rs 5,000 tend to have specifications of 512 MB RAM, low end processors and 4 to 8 GB internal storage. These specifications pose real challenges for the game developer community as the games need to be light on memory and highly optimised for low end processors,” the study noted. As mobile data is expensive in India – and lightweight games reduce the cost burden – that prevents users, facing mobile data constraints, from using certain games. “As developers look to capture users across India, they will have to design their games to be inherently smaller, faster, and lighter – not just create lightweight copies of heavier games,” the researchers said. Researchers also noted that degradation in phone performance prompted both men and women gamers to delete a game. IANS