I just read an article yesterday that said Rovio Mobile is now worth $1.2 billion (“Angry Birds is Bigger than Mario?“). I don’t know what that implies for the rest of you, but when I first heard this statistic, my jaw dropped. Rovio is worth almost as much as my favorite football/soccer team, Arsenal FC (which has been around since 1896). So is the story of Rovio an overnight success that other developers can strive for?

Well, not exactly. What is true is that the market for games has changed drastically in the last few years. The iOS and Android being the biggest proponents of this change, of course, but not the only ones. The mobile platform has become huge. With talk of whether console gaming is dying and where the industry is headed, it’s always important to take a step back and analyze to the best of our abilities what we have seen unfold before our very eyes.

Thomas Killen, one of the minds behind renowned Australian devs The Voxel Agents, has published a very revealing research study into the mobile market. Granted, as the humble Tom will admit, he’s not exactly a market analyst and expert in the field, but given his experience with the Voxel Agents (and the fact he put in an effort to finding out as much information as possible about the topic at hand), it’s fair to take his rather unbiased approach respectably.

There are a number of interesting findings from Tom’s article, like the fact that “every day 500,000 Android phones are activated” and how if every developer received a piece of the mobile pie, they would only end up with around $8,500 each (take into account outliers like Chillingo and Rovio and you’ll understand how skewed this statistic is).

Indeed, Tom’s study answers some burning questions I myself had for the mobile marketplace, but it also important raises new ones. Where do we go from here? What have we learned? I’ll leave those judgments up to you, the reader, consumer, or aspiring developer, because the answers certainly involve all of us. Check out Tom’s research right here. And yes, there are graphs, plenty of them, so do yourself a favor and give it a looksee!

[The Voxel Agents]