The mobile gaming market is growing faster than any other in the industry, with more and more companies joining this space. Our mobile equipment is evolving so fast that we can already see AAA games being released for these devices, like Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, for example.
There are endless opportunities for game developers when it comes to the global mobile gaming market, but for the efforts to be effective, it is essential to understand the platform. If you want to learn more about the promising mobile games market and the main aspects of it, you have come to the right place.
In this article, we will show you everything you need to know about the mobile world and the main gaming statistics regarding it. Make sure to take a look at each of the numbers and trends to see how they impact your game.
Advantages of Mobile Gaming
There are several reasons why the number of mobile gamers is growing so fast, and knowing these aspects is indispensable. They can generate insights and be guiding factors when developing your products.
Mobile game genres have an advantage over other platforms, thanks to numerous reasons, and understanding these facts is the first step to using them for your benefit. Here, we will show you the main ones and how they impact your mobile game revenue:
Portability
One of the main reasons why people play mobile games so much is that the platform is extremely portable and easy to use, as we always carry our phones with us.
On the other hand, PC games require a dedicated machine that, unless it’s a gaming laptop, is not portable at all, and you can’t move anywhere. The same works for console games, where you need to have the equipment connected to a dedicated display.
With mobile, you’re always carrying the device, and you can play games wherever you are. It is the most practical platform available, and since everyone has a phone, the number of potential customers is higher than in any other platform.
Variety of Titles
Another great advantage of mobile devices is the massive catalog available. You can find experiences of every mobile game genre, going from hyper-casual games to competitive experiences.
Along with being a practical platform, downloading games is also an easy task, and with just a few clicks, you’re ready to play video games on your device. Mobile stores are also constantly promoting the titles available, so if you’re in doubt about what to play, you can simply check the homepage and search for the top mobile games of the week.
Each app store has its own suggestions and platforms, so make sure to take a look at yours to see how they promote the games inside and what you can do to shine as the top mobile game on the page.
Number of Users
Everybody has a smartphone nowadays, whether an iPhone, Android, or any other device. You can reach billions of users worldwide when launching apps and games for these portable consoles.
It is one of the best investments, and even though most of these phones don’t have the same processing power as a PC, they’re still packed with high-end components. This allows you to create all kinds of titles, whether you want to make an RPG-Maker title or something with fancier graphics and gameplay.
According to BankMyPhone, over 60% of the population already have smartphones. This represents 4.88 billion devices worldwide. Each of these phones represents a potential customer that can download your games.
Whether you develop educational or strategy games, there’s a vast market to explore. You only need to understand your audience and plan the right strategy to ensure good mobile games statistics and tons of downloads.
Processing Power
Another positive aspect of smartphones is how powerful they can be. Even though you can face problems with the processing power of your device when playing some specific titles, this problem is way less common than when playing PC games.
When gaming on a computer or laptop, you must always worry about their minimum requirements and their performance on your machine. On the other hand, this problem is way less recurrent on smartphones, whether because most games don’t have such detailed graphics or many other reasons.
If you have a device, you just need to access the Google Play Store or App Store from iOS and download your favorite games. Along with the official stores, you can also find alternative mobile game markets for each platform.
Main Mobile Gaming Statistics for 2024
Now it’s time to see some of the essential mobile gaming industry statistics for 2024. They regard different aspects of the industry, like revenue, downloads, and many other factors.
Make sure to take a close look at each one of them. This way, you can understand what this means for your company and how it impacts your efforts.
Here are the main characteristics to keep track of:
Mobile Gaming Revenue
The gaming industry is one of the most profitable in the entire world, representing a revenue of $184 billion in 2022 across all platforms. From these 184 billion dollars, $92 billion came from mobile game downloads and in-app purchases, according to Statista.
Thus, mobile game developers were responsible for half the year’s revenue, being the biggest platform in percentage. If you have doubts about how impactful mobile titles are in the global gaming industry, you should know that the projections for 2024 are that the industry will raise a revenue of approximately 210 billion dollars.
Mobile games are expected to grow even more and represent almost 60% of this amount. This revenue comes not only from title sales but also from in-game purchases, mobile game advertisers, and other sources of income, says Maf.ad.
Number of Successful Games
When it comes to mobile game stats, it’s crucial to track how much revenue apps are generating on average for developers. In the last year, 1,419 apps generated a profit of over $10 million for their companies, while 224 generated more than $100 million, and 10 surpassed the $1 billion mark. (Source: Udonis)
While it may seem daunting with tens of thousands of games releasing yearly on mobile platforms, achieving the milestone of 10 million downloads is no small feat across any gaming platform. Even major companies struggle to reach such numbers. The mobile gaming landscape offers substantial profit margins, allowing anyone to generate significant revenue through iOS and Android apps. Whether you develop free-to-play titles or less mainstream gaming genres, there’s ample opportunity to turn your app into a lucrative investment.
Total Downloads
The number of game downloads is also growing fast, and according to the latest mobile gaming statistics gathered by Statista, there were almost 90 billion mobile game downloads in 2022 on both platforms. This represents a growth of over 6 billion downloads compared to 2021, showing how fast the mobile gaming community is growing.
The main reason for this whopping number of downloads is the hyper-casual games, which are the top genre in both main game marketplaces (App Store and Play Store). The user who plays video games on mobile usually looks for more chilling and casual experiences, but the competitive scenario is also strongly present on mobile.
Revenue Per User
When talking about the revenue per user, the margin can drastically vary depending on the country. If we’re considering users from all over the world, the average amount each player spends, whether purchasing games or in-game items, is US$57,64, according to Statista.
On the other hand, if we analyze countries like the US, the average revenue per user is over 100 dollars for each active user. Remember that this is on average, and North America is one of the regions that consumes the most of this type of content.
This makes sense when we consider that the number of smartphone users is growing a lot there, and the global gaming market has strong penetration in the region as one of the main forms of entertainment. With this, the demand for smartphone games is also increasing, directly impacting the revenue.
Age and Gender
According to PlayToday, the statistics regarding gender might not be what you expect. If you expected the mobile gamers demographics to be male-dominated, like on consoles, you’re wrong.
Female gamers represent 55% of the total daily active users. On the other hand, male gamers represent 45%. It might not be an expressive difference, but it drastically impacts the industry and shows how this activity is changing its stereotypes.
When it comes to the age group, the one with the largest amount of players is Gen-Z, with 86% of them actively playing games on mobile. But if we consider the average age of a mobile gamer, the age would be 36 years old.
In-App Purchases
Along with purchasing the games, it is common to see the consumer spending money inside the games, whether to remove ads, buy exclusive items, or anything else the developers offer. Most top-grossing mobile games use this tactic to maximize their profit and gather more revenue for the company.
When talking about in-app item sales, it is essential to highlight that 62% of the users under 13 years old make in-app purchases. Additionally, only 31% of the parents of these users support the purchases made by their children.
Moreover, 23% of parents allow their children to spend more than $50 monthly in these games. This directly impacts the total gaming revenue and who to target when marketing your game in app stores. (source: PlayToday)
Most Downloaded Mobile Games
Another vital detail to watch is the most popular games among mobile gamers. This list is constantly changing and is drastically affected by the gaming industry trends.
Some of the most popular mobile titles for 2023/2024 are:
- Subway Surfers – 304 million downloads
- Stumble Guys – 254 million downloads
- Roblox – 208 million downloads
- Candy Crush Saga – 138 million downloads
- Race Master 3D – 128 million downloads
You can see that there’s a variety of genres, going from adventure games to puzzle games. It is a very versatile industry, and you don’t need to develop a specific kind of product to be successful.
You can visit Business of Apps and check out the full list of the most popular mobile games.
Highest Grossing Mobile Game Titles
We showed the most popular mobile game titles by downloads. But this doesn’t mean they were the most profitable ones.
If you want to know which titles raised more money in the entire year, here’s a list for you provided by MobileGamer.biz. You can check the complete list of the most profitable games on their website.
- Honor of Kings – 1,48 billion
- PUBG Mobile – 1,14 billion
- Candy Crush Saga – 957 million
- Genshin Impact – 943 million
- Roblox – 868 million
Top Mobile Game Publishers
According to BoA, these are the most famous mobile games publishers of 2023 by number of downloads. This list doesn’t consider aspects like revenue gathered or consumer spend, being based only on download numbers.
Here are the most popular publishers:
- AZUR Games – 1,5 billion downloads
- Supersonic Studios 1,2 billion downloads
- SayGames – 1,1 billion downloads
- BabyBus – 879 million downloads
- Outfit 7 – 738 million downloads
Leading Mobile Game Genres
One of the most valuable pieces of data to track is which genres are the most popular in the mobile gaming market. Using this hype in your favor can be very beneficial when developing new products for mobile gamers, but everything must be carefully planned to achieve these results.
Here are the most popular genres in the global mobile gaming market:
- Hyper Casual Games
- Role-Playing Games
- Strategy Games
- Puzzle Games
- Casino Games
Mobile Gaming Industry Trends
Now, it’s time to explore the main trends among mobile gamers and developers. Make sure to take a look at each one carefully to see how you can use them to your benefit.
While not mandatory, these trends can significantly influence the visibility and download numbers of your game. Here are the key trends for 2024 in the mobile games market:
Cross Promotion
With so many big industries joining the mobile scenario, it is common to see cross-promotion between multiple projects. This is not new, but it is clearly becoming a trend in recent years.
As we mentioned, big names in the industry, such as Microsoft and Square Enix, for example, are joining the mobile world, and thanks to their vast portfolio, they can migrate users between their titles. You play one game from them and get ads talking about other games, making you download them.
It is a very effective marketing strategy and can bring great results at a low cost. This is not restricted only to big companies; developers of all sizes can do it. You can check our article on cross-promotion on mobile games to see how this strategy works and how you can apply it to your project.
Hybrid Casual Games
One of the most promising trends of 2024 is hybrid casual games. As we saw earlier, hyper-casual games dominate the market and represent most of the sales.
This new subgenre promises to be the perfect substitute for these games, merging hyper-casual elements with mid-core games.
This subgenre aims to deliver easy and accessible gameplay for everyone who wants to play but without giving up on immersive and engaging experiences. This makes sense when analyzing the current target audience of mobile games and how they behave.
The mobile gaming world is transitioning from something extremely casual to a more console-like experience, where players are looking for more complex titles with depth of gameplay and mechanics. This reflects a change of behavior from the players and developers who want to create more complex experiences for this kind of platform.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the most effective mobile game marketing strategies of the last few years and has proven to be extremely successful if done correctly. The secret to a good influencer marketing campaign is to make it look and sound natural.
Selecting an influencer who already engages with your target audience and aligns with the message you wish to convey is a strategy that companies have been employing for years, and it continues to be a trend across all game genres and platforms.
Cross-Platform Titles
Another mobile game trend is creating cross-platform titles, especially for competitive games. We see this practice in titles like Fortnite, Warzone, and, more recently, Valorant. This way, you not only gather more players for your servers but also allow them to play on a wider variety of platforms.
If you want to play League of Legends, for example, but you don’t have a computer, you can download Wild Rift and have fun in the game using only your smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection.
Speaking of League of Legends, Riot has one of the best mobile game marketing campaigns to study and learn how important it is to increase the number of available platforms for your game.
Wild Rift was directly responsible for increasing LoL’s number of active players and driving users back to the MOBA title.
In-Game Items
Another trend that is not new but keeps being present in the entire industry is the in-game items. It is a way to provide the game with additional content and also increase the game’s annual revenue. It is one of the most effective ways to boost mobile game income and keep growing in popularity even for long periods.
These are the main trends in mobile games, but there are dozens of others to explore. The year 2024 promises to be one of the biggest for the mobile industry, not only in terms of new users but also regarding the market share of the companies and how much income they’ll generate. Make sure to keep an eye on these trends to see what you can do to make your game an absolute sales success.
How to Maximize Your Mobile Games Marketing Efforts
If you want the best mobile game marketing results when promoting your new project, hiring a professional agency to help with your strategy is highly recommended. This way, you ensure that an experienced professional takes care of every activity, boosts its results, and optimizes your numbers.
GamerSEO has the best professionals in the marketing industry, with years of experience, to ensure your mobile project reaches the next level and shines among the competition. Whether you need target audience research or a complete strategy to promote your iOS game, we can help you create the perfect action plan, aiming directly at your pain points.
We work side-by-side with our partners to ensure the best results at every process stage. Join us, and let’s create quality marketing together.
Conclusion on Mobile Gaming Industry Statistics and Trends
The mobile gaming industry is one of the most promising ones for the following years, growing faster every year. We see titles of all kinds reaching the smartphone realm, from competitive experiences to totally casual ones.
This space has shown to be very versatile and open to numerous possibilities. However, for a project to be successful and raise tens of millions of dollars is not an easy task, and it will depend on various factors.
If you want the best results, make sure to keep an eye on the market trends and contact a professional agency to help with your content. This way, you’ll definitely create the best project possible that will raise good revenue and make you shine among the competition.
Now that you know everything you need, it is time to start working on your own mobile project. Whether you want to develop a hyper-casual game or any other kind, this industry is a promising space and can be the key to huge profits.
Professional writer and designer graduating from Marketing and Advertisement at PUCRS. Lucciano has been working in the industry for over 6 years and, throughout his journey, has accomplished many achievements, including a SET Award in the entrepreneur category. His main goal as a designer and writer is to create marketing that impacts people’s lives through user experience, emotional connection, or any way that generates positive changes. Along with his work, Lucciano shares a passion for video games, especially horror titles, and playing bass.