Craig Chapple, Mobile Insights Strategist at SensorTower, summarized the state of mobile games in 2022, providing insights on how the global mobile game industry has evolved over the past few years. He also made predictions about what could happen in the future based on the 2022 mobile game industry.
SensorTower analyzes billions of data points in real-time and handles millions of applications and many publishers in many aspects. You can find more information on their website.
Starting his speech with the global mobile game market data in 2021, Craig also touched on the best genres and themes in the US market. He also stated that the industry continues to evolve globally despite all the challenges the world and the mobile game market face.
Craig drew attention to the increase in the first and second quarters of 2020 due to Covid-19. Looking at the data shown by Chapple, it is seen that 2020 global mobile game downloads reached 56.2 billion, increasing by 33 percent year on year across Google Play. It is also seen that April is the month with the most downloads due to the virus.
From Q1 2019 to Q4 2021, it is seen that there is a healthy increase. The Q1 2021 and third quarter of 2021 reached the level of 22.5 billion dollars, achieving the highest revenues. The period with the most negligible revenue is the first quarter of 2019, with $ 15.1 billion.
According to the markets, Garena Free Fire ranked first on the average of the most downloaded games worldwide in 2021. Then, in the second place is Subway Surfers, developed by Sybo Games, announced to be acquired by Miniclip. PUBG: Mobile, on the other hand, lagged behind its competitors and placed in 3rd place, followed by Roblox.
Roblox manages to move to 1st place only based on App Store downloads. However, the same table is much different for Google Play. Looking at the Google Play downloads, Garena Free Fire maintains 1st place, while Roblox enters the list at 8th place.
Billion-dollar makers
Showing that eight mobile games earned more than $1 billion in revenue in 2021, Chapple points out that the Pokémon Go game has generated $5 billion since its release. On the other hand, Brawl Stars managed to become Supercell’s billion-dollar revenue gate, while Genshin Impact seems to have managed to earn 2 billion dollars alone in 1 year.
Honor of Kings, developed by Tencent, stood out in the MOBA genre and reached a user spend of 10 billion dollars.
Referring also to the Turkish market, Chapple emphasized that the market is on the rise. The country reached 1.9 billion in downloads, up 2.4% yearly. In addition, player spending increased by 70% to $616.5 million.
After all this, Chapple ended his speech and answered the questions from the audience. You can reach the full speech and much more on the Mobidictum YouTube channel. Don’t forget to press the button above to reach the channel and support by subscribing!
