Over the past three or four months, we’ve reported that mobile game companies are starting to be more bullish and are seeing positive trends for one of the first times in awhile. Even Gameloft declared 2008 “a turning point in the mobile gaming industry.”  The new-found growth has undoubtedly been fueled by consumers adoption of new smartphones, including the iPhone and new Blackberry devices. But now we have some more solid figures to back up these hunches. ComScore (NSDQ: SCOR) released a report today that said the number of people downloading mobile games jumped by 17 percent between November 2007 to November 2008. During that period, 8.5 million people, or 3.8 percent of mobile subscribers downloaded a game. ComScore Senior Analyst Mark Donovan: “The rapid growth in smartphone adoption in the United States has provided a boost for mobile gaming, as 34 percent of those downloading a game in November did so using a smartphone. Last year, not one smartphone appeared in the top 10 devices used for mobile downloads. This year, six out of 10 are smartphones, excluding devices with smartphone-like functionality, such as the Instinct and Voyager, which also make appearances.” Release.

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Feature phone vs. smartphone: The iPhone and BlackBerry Curve replaced the RAZR and low-end flip phones as the most popular gaming platforms. In fact, the number of smartphone gamers nearly tripled, while feature-phone gamers dipped 14 percent. iPhone owners accounted for 14 percent of downloaders in November, with 32.4 percent of all iPhone users reporting they downloaded a game during the month, compared with a market average of 3.8 percent. This is good news for companies like EA and Gameloft (EPA: GFT), which aggressively started making games for newer phones, but left more cautious companies like Glu Mobile (NSDQ: GLUU) hurting.