According to data.ai’s latest State of Mobile Gaming report, the industry’s revenue saw a decline for the second consecutive year, dropping to $107.3 billion in 2023. Notably, downloads also decreased for the first time ever, reaching only 88 billion.
Despite these setbacks, data.ai’s insights and forecasts suggest that there are “signs of a turnaround” on the horizon for the mobile games industry.
While consumer spending experienced another drop, the report focuses on the slowed rate of decline, which fell by 5% in 2022 and further decreased by only 2% in 2023. Notably, half of the 10 largest markets also saw a bump in revenue with positive year-on-year growth, indicating that “mobile game makers can find growth opportunities if they target the right markets”.
South Korea’s market experienced an impressive 21% growth, and the UK saw significant growth of 9%. Despite global revenue and download numbers falling by only 2% from 2022, there was still a substantial weekly average of $1.5 billion in spending and 1.1 billion downloads per week. The strongest months for game downloads in 2023 were January and July, with over 1.22 billion every week, just below the peak of 1.25 billion in January 2022.
Key Market Insights
Last year, India emerged as the largest market for mobile downloads, accounting for 9.4 billion downloads from Google Play. This was more than double the second-largest market, Brazil, with 4.3 billion downloads via Google Play. Indonesia completed the top three with 3.3 billion downloads.
The Apple App Store market was significantly smaller, with only the US and China surpassing a billion downloads. The US led with 2.1 billion downloads, followed by China at 1.2 billion, while Japan came in third with 355 million installs.
These iOS numbers have declined compared to 2013 figures, but revenue has increased significantly, rising from $2.9 billion in the US in 2013 to $14.9 billion in 2023.
In terms of spending, the US led the way on the Play Store, with $9.2 billion in 2023. South Korea and Japan followed with $5 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively. Despite India’s high download numbers, the market did not rank in the top 20 for spending.
Overall, the report highlights that 924 games surpassed $10 million in consumer spending last year, with 150 titles surpassing $100 million, and seven reaching the impressive $1 billion milestone, including Gardenscapes, Monopoly Go!, and Honkai: Star Rail.
Though 2023 could not return to pandemic peaks, with potential players stuck indoors accruing disposable income, the entry of miHoYo and Scopely’s latest heavy hitters into the market, China’s international success, and several countries bouncing back, the full report from data.ai carries a broadly optimistic tone. It notes that an increasing number of Chinese game publishers are enjoying success both domestically and internationally, with Japan emerging as a particularly lucrative market.
As the report mentions, China and the US accounted for over half of all consumer spending on mobile games in 2023.
