Personally I’m not into gaming on my smartphone but the word according to a recent study is that mobile phone gaming popularity is on the up in both the United Kingdom and the United States according to a survey by gaming firm PopCap.

According to an article over on Mashable, the research by PopCap shows that 52 percent of 2425 participants in the research survey stated they have played a mobile game on a mobile device, whether their own handset or someone else’s.

Apparently we in the UK are more mobile game hungry that our cousins over in the States, with 73 percent of UK respondents saying they played mobile games, while the US had 44 percent. Roughly a third of all those taking part in the survey said they had played a game on their mobile phone within the last month.

1-in-4 also stated they play a mobile game weekly, while others say they’ve only played once. The largest gaming area is the smartphone user with 83 percent playing a minimum of 1 game in the past week, which places them in the “avid mobile gamer” category apparently.

As for whether men or women domineer the mobile game playing arena, apparently it’s a close call with men playing game only slightly more than women, and the smartphone user is more likely to purchase a mobile game than a feature phone user, with average figures showing that in 2010 smartphone users purchased 5.4 games as opposed to 2.9 purchased by non-smartphone users.

So are you a mobile gamer, do you really get into playing games on your smartphone or do you consider yourself just a casual gamer that only plays when there’s nothing else to do?