Americans Spent $168 Million on “Mobile Virtual Goods” Last Year

Remember Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, the Goldman-Sachs fraud investigation and Sarah Palin’s book? Well a new study has even more evidence that you can get Americans to buy pretty much anything. The study, sexily titled “Magid Media Futures 2010 Wireless and Consumers,” says that last year Americans spent $168 million (or about 8 million Snuggies) on what they call “mobile virtual goods,” but what you probably call “iPhone games,” “Farmville goods,” or “bullshit.” Looking forward, about 70 million Americans own smartphones, and just 5 million of those users already spend an average of $41 per year on things that don’t actually exist, so that $168 million mark is probably going to get even higher. Where is all this money coming from? Aren’t we in a recession? Did all those people who lost their houses transfer their decorating budget to their banks in Farmville?

But it’s probably just silly, shopaholic teen girls wasting all that money, right? That’s the scariest part. According to the study, most of these splurging smartphone gamers are men between the ages of 18 and 34. You could argue that anyone who drops 40 bucks a year on their Farmville house isn’t really a man, but that’s an issue for another post, which I’ll write as soon as my radishes are harvested.