According to a new report, augmented reality mobile game Pokémon GO has led to a surge in sales of portable power packs for mobile devices, as players charge up their smartphones and tablets to keep their Pokémon trainer journey going.
As such, battery pack manufacturers would be one of the few segments of society that will likely not have any complaints against the suddenly declining Pokémon GO.
The report, published by analytics company NPD Group, revealed that portable power pack unit sales surged by 101 percent over the two-week period of July 10 and July 23, compared with the corresponding period last year. The company partly attributed the increase in sales to product promotion, but it was the massive popularity of Pokémon GO that largely drove the high demand for the devices.
NPD Group executive director and consumer technology industry analyst Ben Arnold noted that with Pokémon GO utilizing a bevy of mobile device capabilities such as location features, motion sensors and the camera, the app quickly drains the battery life of smartphones and tablets. This has led consumers to buy portable power packs to compensate for the extra battery consumption while playing Pokémon GO so that they can keep on catching and training Pokémon and fighting gym battles.
It is likely that iOS users have been more inclined to purchase backup battery packs, as Niantic Labs disabled the battery saver mode for the game's version for iPhones and iPads. The developer, however, has said that the feature will soon be coming back to the iOS version of Pokémon GO.
Such news is great for manufacturers of portable power packs, with some companies even using Pokémon GO as an angle to sell their products. However, with users going through their battery life cycles faster as they charge up their devices with these portable power packs, they could start experiencing decreased battery performance much faster.
Of course, battery performance could very well be among the last things that Pokémon GO players have on their mind right now. While portable power pack companies will certainly have no qualms against Pokémon GO, players have increasingly become frustrated over the many issues and bugs that they have experienced with the game.
In the first major update to Pokémon GO since it was released, players were expecting Niantic Labs to fix the glitch on the game's Nearby feature, which should ideally show gamers how close they are to the Pokémon within their area. Instead, Niantic Labs removed the feature completely, making it very difficult to search for Pokémon to capture. To further add to the frustrations of players, the developer also moved to shut down third-party tracking websites that provided the location of Pokémon to players, which were created in the first place due to the bugs of the Nearby feature.
In addition, even if players get lucky and bump into a Pokémon to capture, a new bug has made it much harder to capture them, with Pokémon running away more often and special throws no longer providing bonus XP.
Some locations, such as museums, cemeteries and federal structures, have also complained about hordes of Pokémon GO players entering their properties.
