Mobile Gaming Industry - Statistics & Facts

Mobile media is taking our lives by storm. The time Americans spend with mobile, non-voice content is expected to grow by approximately 50 percent over a period of seven years, from 135 minutes in 2013 to an estimated 203 minutes in 2018. What is more, between 2015 and 2018, mobile internet usage time in the country is expected to grow from 140 daily minutes to 189 minutes per day, representing a 35 percent growth within the three years measured. Mobile web usage time is expected to account for roughly 16.7 percent of that time, with the remaining mobile internet time spent in-app.

Mobile games contribute greatly to the high growth rate of mobile media use. On a global level, in 2015 the industry generated 30.1 billion U.S. dollars in revenue. The total figure is expected to grow to more than 40.6 billion by 2017. Furthermore, it was calculated in 2016 that revenues of Google Play Store and Apple App Store from mobile games accounted for 90 and 80 percent of total revenues of these app stores respectively. As with all things gaming, data shows that Asia remains the largest region based on mobile games revenue as of 2016. Approximately three times smaller, North America was the second largest mobile gaming region, having generated 6.9 billion U.S. dollars that year. At end of 2016, there was an average of 2.8 billion monthly active users of mobile games worldwide, up from 2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2015.

It was found in early 2016 that U.S. gamers played an average of 3.6 mobile games per month, and 1.3 games on a daily basis. Certain studies have taken a deeper look into consumer behavior when it comes to mobile gaming. Arcade and action games take the lead in popularity as these particular mobile genres were downloaded more than 60 million times in mid-2016. However, it is the strategy games that seem to be accounting for the lion's share of monthly revenues on the United States, as they were believed to have generated 194 million U.S. dollars in July 2016. By comparison, arcade games brought in 87 million dollars in revenue that month. All in all, in 2015 over 51 percent of U.S. mobile phone users were gaming on their devices. It is expected that starting in 2018 the penetration of mobile gaming in the United States will surpass 60 percent, and in 2020 it is projected to reach 63.7 percent.

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