I like stats however, these are telling us what we already know, and can guess at with a high degree of accuracy just by observation and extrapolation. When you consider the context of kids lives and access to technology obviously these results will favor tablets. (Not that this data which I presume is US centric must look at households with kids that own both tablets and smartphones. Kids as apparently presented (what age) are highly unlikely to have full time access to a smartphone.)
“The data from 15 billion mobile transactions a month shows that 77 percent of kids favor gaming on tablets compared to about 10 percent who favor smartphones. By comparison, 17 percent of adults play on tablets while 65 percent play on smartphones.”“Another interesting fact is that games for kids have remarkably low retention rates. On average, only 12 percent of kids return to a game app after one month. By comparison, more than 41 percent of adults will return to a mobile game after one month. That means that developers should spend more time making their apps more engaging, rather than marketing the app to more and more kids.”
What matters is a broader contextual understanding. Why do kids like certain games? What keeps their attention and makes them want to share with friends? We can look at broad brushstrokes or look more deeply at what is actually happening. I’m sure there are huge difference by age group and game type and even dependent on “parent type”.
What I really want to know is what big data sets can tell us when we start interrogating it for more contextual inquiry? Separately, I note that this data quotes 15 billion transactions a month. It doesn’t say anything about what % of that 15 billion is kids or anything about frequency or active time. I’d expect an average kid session to be longer than an adult and adults to have much higher frequency. So basically, top level data like this grabs headlines while it really doesn’t help change the broad brushstrokes story.
NOTE: MixPanel provides services that can help you track your app, signing up is free (expands their database) and it can help you right away track new accounts, services, and tie them to other marketing events. All app developers should be doing something along these lines.