M:Metrics‘ latest coverage reports mixed news for mobile game companies. The bottom line is that while there are more mobile gamers than ever, the number of people who have actually downloaded a game to their phone is fairly static.

Drilling down a little, the percentage of people who had played a mobile game ranged from 14% in France to 28.7% in the UK, with other the markets of US, Spain, Italy and Germany somewhere in between. Whereas only 4% and 10.6% had played downloaded games in France and the UK.

There could be a number of reasons for this and M:Metrics mention one big bugbear in their press release - the already huge availability of pirated and free downloads already available. Mobile game playing tends to be about casual gaming and a version of Solitaire knocked up by some student in China is likely to be just as good as a fully produced one in some gaming studio - production values aren’t that important.

But it’s not just piracy that’s at work here, surely? One reason will be the (still) relatively high cost of data in many markets. Meaning that you pay once for the game and then the operator charges a fortune to deliver it.

Another reason is certainly marketing. I know from AdMob that users will download applications and games in their tens of thousands, if they’re very clear on what they’re getting. So vague descriptions and confused propositions lead to a very obvious lack of response.

But the good news for the mobile gaming industry is that there’s plenty of potential here. They just need to spell out to the phone owner why they should purchase and then make the download experience easy and cheap.

There’s quite a big “just” in the previous sentence. But it can be done.