- Sensor Tower’s Q2 2024 Digital Market Index report reveals consumers spent $19.7 billion on mobile games during Q2 2024
- Apple users increased mobile game spending by 7%, while spending fell by 2% on Android
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Sensor Tower’s new Q2 2024 Digital Market Index report places total mobile app consumer spending at a record $36.2 billion, combining figures from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store between April 1st, 2024 and June 30th, 2024.
Breaking out mobile gaming specifically consumers spent $19.7 billion on mobile games during Q2 2024, a slight decline on Q1’s $20.3 billion but marking the period as the fourth consecutive quarter that has beaten the previous year’s figures.
Mobile games continued to lead in overall app spending with a 54% share of the market in the second quarter, compared to non-gaming apps’ 46% share.
However, this does mark a rise for non-gaming mobile spending, up from a 42% share in Q2 2023. Data analyst Sensor Tower has claimed that the category “is on track to soon surpass mobile games”.
Splashing the cash
Apple users led the charge in mobile game growth last quarter with spending up 7% year-over-year, meanwhile Android games spending fell by 2%. App Store spending was nearly double Google Play’s too, at $12.85 billion versus $6.84 billion in the quarter, demonstrating considerably stronger revenue potential from Apple owners.
Apple owners also contributed a significant portion of non-gaming app spend in Q2, having spent $12.3 billion on the category compared to Android users’ $4.17 billion contribution; even so, it’s Google Play seeing the greater rise in non-games spending, up 27% in Q2 while Apple’s rose by 19%.
Across categories and platforms, the US spent $13 billion and remained the key mobile market of Q2 2024, accounting for 36% of the global sum. The country’s lead has only widened with its mobile spending up by another $2 billion over Q2 2023. Meanwhile, the rest of the world combined increased its spending by only $1.7 billion.
The US was also the sole market to surpass $10 billion in overall app spend last quarter. Mainland China was the only other region to surpass $5 billion, seeing 8% year-on-year growth on iOS alone.
Spending declined in many of Asia’s top markets, however, down 15% year-on-year in Japan and 1% year-on-year in South Korea. Instead, a number of European countries were among the quarter’s biggest growers, including France, Germany and the UK – up 22%, 21% and 21% respectively.
Though these figures consider spending in mobile games and non-gaming apps, Sensor Tower stated expectations for “modest positive growth to continue” in mobile games specifically, while the market aims to “regain the highs seen in 2021”.
Download difficulty
While mobile game revenue rose last quarter, downloads fell to their lowest level since before the pandemic, at approximately 12.6 billion. This marked a 6% year-on-year decline, with installs across both Google Play and Apple’s App Store falling.
Of those 12.6 billion mobile game downloads, 10.72 billion came from the Play Store and 1.84 billion from the App Store – Android users taking the clear lead here, unlike spending.
“It’s not surprising to see app downloads decline as the mobile market matures and fewer new consumers enter the market,” said Sensor Tower. “Despite this, the battle for user attention (and spend) remains critical.”
In spite of download difficulties, $36.2 billion in quarterly revenue marks another new record for the broader mobile industry, and so soon after Q1 broke a record of its own.
