Mobile games are main income for developers

Mobile games continue to be the primary source of income for mobile app developers. According to the numbers presented by NoKyc.com, mobile games are expected to account for 52.2% of all downloads in both major app stores in 2024.

Mobile users are expected to download 150.4 billion games in 2024

Mobile phone users are more likely to download games than any other kind of applications. In fact, as per the estimates from Statista Market Insights, more than 50% of downloads from both major app stores are games.

Mobile games are main income for developers

In 2024, users are expected to download a total of 287,948 million (287.95 billion) apps in total. Of these downloads, mobile games are expected to account for 150,366 million (or 150.4 billion) downloads, thus making up 52.2% of all downloads. In 2023, mobile games accounted for 51.4% of all app downloads. Thus, the share of mobile game downloads is expected to increase in 2024.

Photo & Video apps are expected to be the second most popular choice for downloads. As per the data, users are expected to download 31,473 million (or 31.5 billion) photo and video apps during 2024. Thus, photo and video apps are expected to make up 10.9% of all downloads.

Distribution of mobile app downloads in 2024

Utility apps are expected to be the third most popular category of apps. There are expected to be 20,305 million downloads of such apps in 2024, making up slightly more than 7% of all downloads. Entertainment apps will see 14,013 million downloads during 2024, making up 4.9% of all downloads.

Social networking apps are only the fifth most popular category of apps when it comes to the number of downloads. Social networking apps are expected to account for 12,815 million downloads in 2024, making up 4.4% of all app downloads.

Music apps are next, with an estimation of 9,260 million downloads this year, making up just 3.2% of all downloads.

The remaining categories, such as Productivity, Education, Lifestyle, Business, Health & Fitness, Books & Reference, Finance, Travel, Sports, Food & Drink, News & Magazines, Shopping, Weather, Navigation, and Medical, are accumulated under ‘Other’. These categories are expected to garner a total of 49,707 million downloads, 17.3% of all downloads.

The distribution of annual revenue in the gaming industry

Easy accessibility to smartphones in the last decade has put mobile gaming at the forefront of the gaming industry. Not long ago, mobile games had a limited appeal to companies involved in gaming development. However, as things stand, mobile games have become the biggest money churner for developers/publishers.

According to the data available on Statista, mobile games made $196.65 million in revenue in 2023. Console gaming was the second biggest segment, but it made a considerably smaller amount in revenue – $104.69 million. PC gaming contributed $80.27 million to the overall revenue, and browser games brought another $15.03 million.

When we look at the breakdown of the entire revenue, mobile gaming contributed to 49.6% of the overall revenue of $396.64 million in 2023. In 2022, the share of revenue from mobile gaming was 49.5%.

According to the estimates, the annual revenue from mobile gaming is set to increase to $222.23 million in 2024. The contribution from mobile gaming towards the overall revenue is set to marginally increase to 49.7%.

In 2030, the revenue from mobile gaming is expected to increase to $437.99 million – an increase of 153% in eight years (from 2022 to 2030). Furthermore, the share of mobile gaming revenue as part of the overall revenue is expected to touch 50.3%.

Hence, we can see that the revenue from mobile gaming is increasing at a faster rate than revenues from other segments. Similarly, the share from mobile gaming towards the overall revenue has also been increasing in recent years, and the same trend is expected to continue in the near future.