Report: Mobile gaming to surpass rivals, becoming $45B market by 2018

Mobile gaming is an absolutely huge business, as smartphones and tablets continue to reach new phone owners across the world. Game software revenue is expected to generate $88 billion revenue in 2015, and surpass $110 billion in 2018, according to the Digi-Capital intelligence firm.

The mobile market is expected to draw more interest than console games, but Steam PC titles and free-to-play game titles weren't included in the research.

"Where mobile games will take $3 of every $10 spent by gamers on software in 2015, that figure will go up to $4 out of every $10 by 2018," said Tim Merel, founder and managing director of Digi-Capital, in a report. "Mobile games revenue will grow from $29 billion in 2015 to $45 billion by 2018 at 15 percent annual growth."

Smaller game studios developing mobile games will have a hard time trying to keep up with established studios, and attracting new users will remain expensive.