Games dominate mobile internet business 'rich list'

A new report from investment and consultancy firm Digi-Capital has revealed games to be the dominant industry in the world's most valuable mobile internet firms, with the industry accounting for 12 of the 32 online firms valued at $1 billion and above.

Unsurprisingly, the top spots on the list of estimated valuations are occupied by globally recognised brands like Twitter, What'sApp and Uber, but a preponderance of games companies elsewhere in the list shows just how much influence the gaming sector has on the burgeoning market.

In eighth place, GungHo is the most valuable gaming company on the list, actually dropping two places from last quarter's study after shedding an estimated $2.5 billion in value. However, a number of other games companies, such as Mixi (+$1.3bn), Colopl (+$0.4bn), Com2Us (+$1bn) and Kabam (+$0.3bn) are showing growth and moving up the ratings.

"Digi-Capital's Mobile Internet Billions list has grown to 32 'billion dollar' companies, adding $11.4B shareholder value in Q3 2014 alone," said Digi-Capital founder Tim Merel. "That's $125M value added every day of Q3 to reach a combined $163B valuation, only 7 years after the launch of the iPhone.

"As well as adding huge value collectively, there has been a lot of movement in the rankings. Daumkakao (merger of Daum and Kakao) leapt 15 places, followed by Mixi, Square, Tango and AirWatch. Youzu Interactive, Momo, Com2Us, Gumi, Kabam and FunPlus are new to the list, while DeNA, King, GREE, Gungho, Pandora, Waze, Zillow, Snapchat and CyberAgent all lost places."

Geographically, the list is massively skewed toward US companies, which represent 13 of the 32, followed by Japan (8) and China (6). Just one of the companies, King, is based in the UK.

The full report is available from Digi-Capital.