Apple’s iOS platform appears to be the world’s most popular platform for playing games, according to new data from the Asymco market research firm, as reported by “Ars Technica” (http://macte.ch/rrYy7).

Asymco compared cumulative sales of home console and handheld gaming devices to the number of registered users for the iOS Game Center. During the 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference Apple said that Game Center — a free service that facilitates high score tracking, achievements, and online play — has 130 million users.

Using this number asa proxy for the number of iOS gamers, Asymco say they put iOS well ahead of any current console and trail just behind the Nintendo DS’s roughly 150 million unit sales. Considering the Playstation 2’s roughly 150 million unit sales, that would rank iOS as the third most popular gaming platform of all time.