What could the rising interest in Pokémon Go mean for Big Data?

Telecoms.com periodically invites expert third parties to share their views on the industry’s most pressing issues. In this piece Tom Ovenden of Telco Data Analytics Europe looks at the effect smash hit mobile AR game Pokémon Go is likely to have on how we gather and process end-user data.

As you’ve probably noticed, either on the internet, in the news or on the streets, the infamous Pokémon games have made a returned to the forefront of society. The brand first appeared in Japan in 1998 and after huge initial interest was then introduced to the rest of the world later that year. Since then Nintendo have released 122 Pokémon games on a number of consoles plus an endless number of TV series, reaching an estimated core global audience of 10-12 million.

However, just when we thought that Pokémon had had its time, and was being looked back on as another of those kitsch trends, alongside the likes of Yo Yos and Pogs, the game is making a dramatic comeback.  Judging by what we’re seeing not only on the internet, but also the streets you could be hearing the name Pikachu thrown around a lot more often.

The interesting thing comes when you look at how the game is played. In short it is a free-to-play, location-based, augmented reality, multiplayer online mobile game. You need to have a stable online connection at all times in order to play along with having your GPS signal turned on. So you can expect a user to be using a good amount of data whilst walking around and playing this game.

Now this type of game isn’t the first of its kind. Niantic, the company behind PokémonGo, has had some previous experience with their very successful game Ingress, and there are many other available in the app store as well as the Google Play store. But the launch of PokémonGo in the US, Australia and New Zealand has created so much excitement and interest that the stocks of Nintendo have risen $9 billion dollars in just the few days it’s been out, and with this only being officially available in 3 countries so far, once the game hits a worldwide audience you can be sure to see that value rise even more.

With this meteoric rise in popularity, and with more worldwide releases on the horizon, you can be sure that this is only just the start of something very big. Big not only for those chasing Pokémon around town, but also for the Telco data companies, with early users already identifying that a robust data package for their phone is a necessary tool for a day of hunting, along with a full battery.

But what will this increase in data mean? With the increasing capabilities of data analytics tools and the improvement in storage and accessibility, this could lead to some very interesting trends being discovered in correlation with the increasing popularity of the app. With information such as the volume of data, variety, velocity and variability all giving us insight and furthering our knowledge of the end user.

While it’s still the early days of PokémonGo and it’s not yet made it worldwide, there are a few things you can be sure of. You will continue to see PokémonGo dominating the news for both good and bad reasons, there will undoubtedly be a rise in data needs, for both storage and accessibility, and finally you will more than likely encounter someone in the street or park very soon desperately flicking at their smartphone screen whilst simultaneously trying to make it look like they definitely not playing Pokémon.

Tom Ovenden is Digital Content Marketer at KNect 365. Find out more about the transformational power of big data and geo-analytics for your business at Telco Data Analytics Europe which takes place in Madrid from the 25 – 26th October and is hosted by KNect365 in conjunction with Telefónica. Contact Head of Analytics Emma Pearce at [email protected] or +44 (0) 207 551 9720 for more information.