Consumer spending on mobile games on the App Store and Google Play will reach $89.6 billion by the end of 2021, according to Sensor Tower.
Player spending has increased by 12.6 per cent year-over-year in comparison $79.6 billion in 2020.
Mobile games account for 67.4 per cent of all in-app spending this year, a decrease from 71.7 per cent in 2020.
Despite this decrease, mobile games still account for the majority of spending across both marketplaces, accounting for 61.5 per cent of App Store revenue and 78 per cent of Google Play revenue.
Global consumer spending on the App Store is projected to reach $52.3 billion by the end of 2021, a 9.9 per cent increase year-over-year. The highest-grossing iOS game this year is Honor of Kings from Tencent, generating $2.9 billion in revenue, a rise of 16 per cent year-over-year.
Honor of Kings is the highest-grossing mobile game of all time and surpassed the $10 billion milestone earlier this year.
An honorable king
Player spending on mobile games on Google Play is expected to reach $37.3 billion in 2021, an increase of 16.6 per cent year over year. Coin Master from Moon Active will be the highest-grossing game on Google Play and is expected to generate $912 million, a 13 per cent increase year-over-year.
Sensor Tower estimates that approximately 46.7 billion, or 86 per cent, of all mobile game downloads are on Google Play, a rise of 1.3 per cent year-over-year.
Free Fire, from Garena, saw the highest number of downloads on Google Play this year, accumulating 218.8 million, despite representing a 14 per cent year-over-year decrease.
On the App Store, mobile games have been downloaded approximately 8.6 billion times worldwide throughout 2021, down 14.9 per cent year-over-year.
PUBG Mobile from Tencent is expected to be the App Store’s most downloaded game of 47.5 million installs, a decrease of 18.5 per cent year-over-year. The figures indicated also include the localised version of the game for China, Game for Peace.
