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It goes without saying that the market for mobile games is booming. We have witnessed mobile games set records and generate billions of dollars in revenue over the previous few years, meaning now is an extremely lucrative time to push user acquisition for mobile games
Mobile devices are being used to play mobile games anywhere at any time, making them much more practical than traditional console gaming. With this, something to consider for mobile user acquisition is that the demographics of mobile gamers have also been evolving and changing.
As a result, if you're a game creator or advertiser and want to improve user acquisition for mobile games, you need to be very familiar with the mobile gaming market. It is vital to remain current with trends and gaining in-depth expertise in order to adapt your mobile user acquisition strategy.
Mobile Games have always been the most popular category in the Apple and Google app stores. Whatever way you care to look at it – by number of active apps, number of downloads, time spent, revenue generated.
Statista data reveals that games make up the largest portion of app downloads, as shown by the following graph.
Most popular Apple App Store categories as of 1st quarter 2022, by share of available apps
With this level of dominance it's vital to fully comprehend all aspects of mobile gaming so as to better understand how to scale user acquisition for mobile games.
By Revenue share
Looking at the growth in the mobile gaming revenue over the last 4 years in the following graph, it is clear that this market will offer high user acquisition for mobile gaming apps.
Mobile gaming app revenue worldwide from 2019 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)
Any mobile user acquisition strategy will of course focus on generating revenue as one of the key goals. While mobile gaming as a whole is showing year on year growth, it is interesting to break it down by genre. Doing so will allow you to see how best to optimize user acquisition for mobile games
According to Statistic, the genre with the highest revenue shares at the end of 2021 is Puzzles at 21.18%. Followed closely by Casino (18.9%) and Strategy (17.17%). The list continues as follows:
Top Mobile Game Genres by Revenue Share
By Downloads
Looking at the number of downloads is equally as telling for your mobile user acquisition. As of the end of 2021, the following genres received the highest downloads, according to AppAnnie’s State of Mobile 2022 report.
Action (Hyper-casual) – 4.01 billion
Puzzle (Hyper-casual) – 3.78 billion
Simulation (Hyper-casual) – 3.15 billion
Kids (Other) – 2.57 billion
Driving (Simulation) – 1.63 billion
.io (Hyper-casual) – 1.41 billion
Runner (Action) – 1.20 billion
Creative Sandbox – 1.12 billion
Simulation Sports – 1.10 billion
Pet (Simulation) – 0.90 billion
Demographics
Looking at the demographics of mobile gamers will give you an insight into how best to scale user acquisition for mobile games, depending on the genre your app falls under. A vast range of people from all over the world make up the mobile gaming community. In this section, we'll go over some of the general traits of the mobile gaming populations, a fundamental stage of any mobile user acquisition strategy.
- In the US, men make up 57.7% of mobile gaming players, while women make up 42.3%. (2021 Statista)
- The largest age group for US-based mobile gamers, 32.7 percent of them are between the ages of 25 and 34. (2021 Statista)
- In the US, 34.1 percent of those who play mobile games have high incomes as of 2021. (2021 Statista)
- The US has the highest penetration rate in 2021 (46.7%), followed by South Korea (44.9%) and China (35.9%). (38.8 percent ). (2021 Statista)
This data on mobile gaming makes it clear that market growth will continue through 2022 and into the future. In order to succeed in this competitive market, advertisers need to focus on these statistics to enhance their mobile user acquisition strategy and seize this opportunity.
