App Annie: Games accounted for 33% of cellular downloads and 74% of spending in 2018

Mobile market studies firm App Annie knows our phones are almost recreation consoles, and it’s sharing a few stats to expose how lots of us play games, how long we play, and what genres are on the rise.

And just how many games pop out in 12 months on Apple’s App Store and Google Play? App Annie released its “State of Mobile: 2019 and past” report this week, sharing facts on what it’s amassed and analyzed about the worldwide mobile marketplace in 2018. It determined that one-1/3 of all global downloads in 2018 were for games … and that developers and publishers launched over 2.7 million video games on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. This, of course, doesn’t matter in games on different app stores or ecosystems.

Four billion people will play video games in 2019, and the mobile gaming marketplace is pushing almost $70 billion. And this document from App Annie reinforces what another marketplace analyst, Newzoo, forecasted in advance this year — that more than 2. App Annie finds that seventy-four cents of every dollar spent in the app stores are for games, and 95% of these are from in-app purchases versus paid video games. Games run the cell app economy. One stat that I didn’t find unexpected: most people who spend on video games are people 25 and over. After all, most young adults and kids can’t have the funds for telephones, although it appears like each child you see out and about in recent times has a phone.

Here are a few highlights from App Annie’s document.

Games account for 10% of the time spent on apps. I notion this would be more, however, than I concept about my very own use of email, work communique apps like Slack, and media apps consisting of Reddit, Twitter, and The Athletic, and it made the experience. Many people spend a couple of minutes flipping cards or matching gemstones on their phone each day. However, I’ll spend an hour or more analyzing sports articles on The Athletic. For others, cellular is their primary viewing platform for TV and movies. And don’t get me started on checking work email.

Other exciting engagement stats include:

Social and Communications apps made up 50% of overall time spent globally in apps in 2018, followed by Video Players and Editors at 15% and Games at 10%. This 10% proportion has held steady over time, while the same time as time spent on apps has typically grown 50% over the past two years. This is a way to improve engagement from existing gamers who are investing more considerable time in games than in the past. But it also comes from a broadening person base, mainly in much less mature markets, who use smartphones for the first time. As I look at my getting-older iPhone, I see I have 14 games on my cellphone. Now, I cover the sports enterprise, so that is no surprise. App Annie reveals that most people play two video games a month. In my regular rotation, the mobile video games are Hearthstone, Talisman, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, and Warriors of Waterdeep, and a Pinochle app (two of those are paid apps) in the shape of that profile.