Mobile phone games have seen a jump in popularity over the past few years, so much so in fact, it seems that they need their own chart.

Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and industry tracker, NPD Group today announced the first ever sales chart for mobile games.

Serving as the mobile entertainment industry's authority on the most popular wireless games, the MEF Mobile Games chart will
provide reliable source data for tracking growth and progress in the US.

It will begin as a monthly update, and cover popular games and total sales

"Until now, mobile gaming was a sector of the industry that had been wholly under-tracked for the US market", said Jill Braff, SVP of Global Publishing at Glu Mobile and a leader of the MEF Mobile Games Chart initiative.

Working in collaboration with MEF and its members, NPD will compile and chart the data, creating sales information that both MEF and NPD will use to promote and create awareness within the mobile games space.

"NPD is very excited to be working with MEF on its mobile games sales chart initiative. Our experience in providing tracking and insight to the video game industry, along with MEF's mobile content expertise, will help us provide the most complete picture of mobile games possible", said Martin Zagorsek, vice president of games and software for The NPD Group.

MEF launched the first ever ringtones chart in the UK in 2004 which
continues to be compiled by the Official Charts Company and used to track sales of realtones.

"Our US mobile games chart with NPD is meeting an essential market need", said Rimma Perelmuter, MEF executive director. "To date, there hasn't been a reliable market source for obtaining the latest aggregated figures in mobile gaming for the US.

"By joining forces with NPD Group, we are bringing the industry's credible resource on games to market", Rimma added.

No word on if we'll see any such chart in the UK as yet, but we think it'll only be a matter of time.