Determinants of growth and decline in mobile game diffusion

Rapidly advancing mobile technology has made mobile games a leader in the global games market. As the market size of mobile games has grown, the competition has also accelerated enormously. Thus, in order to ensure success, mobile games must sustain their initial boom for a long time, as well as attract enough users to solidify their installed base. The purpose of this research is to detect diffusion patterns and identify the determinants of mobile games' growth and decline hazards. The results show that mobile games have a distinctive brand-level life cycle in which the growth possibility decreases monotonically over time after the release, while the decline possibility rises after reaching the peak and then later begins to fall. This paper shows how the games' characteristics affect their attracting/holding power. The study provides implications for developers and distributors in terms of how to design, market, and manage mobile games.