Zynga dominates social games
Consumer spend on Zynga's PC social networking games and its revenue from lead generation and advertising activities amounted to $544 million in 2010, giving it 39.1% share of the global market, a 4.2 percentage point increase over 2009.
This is the largest increase between the global top five gaming operators.
Zynga's closest competitor, Playfish, owned by Electronic Arts, suffered a significant decline in market share of 3.8 percentage points in 2010. Nonetheless, consumer spending on its properties still grew 42% during the year.
The third-highest ranked online gaming company is Playdom, which is owned by Disney, managed a 0.6 percentage point increase in market share during 2010.
IHS says the global social networking games market was worth $1.4 billion in 2010; up 116.4% from $636 million in 2009, according to Tech Flash.
PC Mag.com states that Zynga has played a central role in expanding the size of the PC social networking games market, attracting millions of new users with its popular titles offered through Facebook.
This is according to Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games for IHS. He says Zynga's CityVille has broken records for monthly active users.
“The success for CityVille had a positive impact on other Zynga games, particularly FarmVille, which achieved growth in its user base in late 2010 after experiencing steady declines during the rest of the year,” notes Harding-Rolls.
Inside Social Games says Zynga unveiled themed campaign in FarmVille around pop singer Lady Gaga's upcoming album, Born This Way.
FarmVille players can enter a Gaga-themed farm filled with unicorns and sheep riding motorcycles as well hear a significant number of songs in-game from her soon-to-be-released album.
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