According to the data published by App Annie, mobile games were the top category for growth on Google Play and iOS this year.
The lockdowns, which shaped our lives in 2020, caused a serious increase in the mobile game industry. Reports published throughout the year show higher figures than we expected in the industry.
According to the latest report from analytics company App Annie, $81 billion of gross consumer spending, which reached 112 billion dollars on mobile in 2020, comes from games. Similarly, when we look at the downloads, 40% of the mobile app downloads on Google Play and App Store this year belong to games. In other words, 53 billion downloads were games out of 130 billion overall.
Looking at the breakdown of that figure between the two stores, in 2019, 40% of all Google Play downloads were games. The rate rose to 45% because games represent 42 billion downloads out of a total of 94 billion in 2020. In iOS, the same as in 2019, games were only 30% of all iOS downloads.
As downloads and consumer spending increased, the time spent on mobile games also increased. In 2020, users spent 284 billion hours on mobile games. This means a 35% increase compared to 2019.
The success of Among Us this year has had a major impact on the growth of the mobile gaming category. Released in 2018, the game reached 1.5 million concurrent players and 4 billion views in September. However, App Annie also touched on the success of My Talking Tom Friends, Roblox, and Call of Duty: Mobile.
“Mobile gaming hit new heights in 2020 — fueled in part by cross-platform play, the growing core mobile gaming market, and continued growth in casual gaming. We can see that key social features also helped to drive mobile gaming adoption and market share — including chat, friend invites and competitive multiplayer modes — particularly those adopted by casual games.”
