More than a billion mobile games are being downloaded globally every week

Prominent app analytics firm Data.ai (formerly App Annie) has published a new Q3 2022 report on the mobile gaming industry, and there are quite a few interesting findings.

To start, it found that each week, consumers are spending $1.54 billion USD (about $2.2 billion CAD) in mobile games as well as downloading more than 1.1 billion new titles. Data.ai notes that even though this is a slight drop from last year, it’s still 25 percent higher than Q3 2019, showing how gaming has only continued to grow amid the pandemic.

To that point, Data.ai reiterated that of the project $222 billion USD (about $305 billion CAD) that it expects the gaming industry to generate overall this year, mobile gaming will account for about 60 percent.

Speaking of percentages, the firm also acknowledged that gaming is more impactful on Google Play than iOS. To be sure, the App Store generated $21 billion USD (about $28.9 billion CAD) in mobile gaming revenue in Q3, which was well above the $11.4 billion USD (about $15.7 billion CAD).

But on the App Store, only about half of revenue comes from game, versus roughly two-thirds of revenue on the Play Store. Put another way, nearly half of the 30 billion apps downloaded on Google Play in Q3 were games, versus only a quarter on iOS. Therefore, mobile gaming plays a comparatively bigger role for Android than its does for iOS.

In terms of specific games, Data.ai says Subway Surfers was the most downloaded game across both platforms in Q3, while Honor of Kings saw the largest consumer spend. Data.ai also singled out Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal, which launched in June to much criticism over its monetization. Despite that controversy, the game still placed seventh in total consumer spend, edging out Pokémon Go and coming in a few spots behind Roblox and Genshin Impact.

Image credit: Blizzard

Source: Data.ai