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Pokemon Go increases battery pack sales by 101%
Pokemon Go is a bit of a battery hog, but people don’t seem to care. It is, after all, the most popular game in US history. And it happens to be making business more successful for battery pack manufacturers!
According to the NDP, portable battery sales have skyrocketed since the Pokemon Go launch. Sales where only up about 4% year-over-year for the few weeks before the game’s launch. That seems like normal business, but things changed after the title’s release. Over 1.2 million units were sold during the 2 weeks after the game hit the streets.
This signals a 101% increase over the same period in 2015 (July 10-23). Impressive, right? Niantic Labs is not the only one making massive amounts of cash over this game. It has over 100 million installs and everyone is trying to reap the benefits of such a highly demanded product.
“Pokémon Go is the summer’s hottest game partly because it utilizes features like location, motion sensors and augmented reality in your smartphone- however, these features consume more of the phone’s battery life. As a way to compensate for the extra battery usage, consumers are buying portable power packs so they can continue to play, uninterrupted.” -Ben Arnold, executive director, industry analyst for consumer technology at The NPD Group.
This seems like a natural side effect to the game’s popularity. After all, smartphones don’t last long when using GPS, the screen and all the other sensors continuously. Battery packs were also a common purchase among Ingress users; but of course, that game wasn’t as popular.