At the end of last year, we commented on an App Annie survey of consumer spending on the App Store, which could exceed $ 122 billion this year. Of course, we can’t talk about it without thinking about one of the categories of apps that consumers spend the most: games.
Now, the analytics firm is back with yet another collection of data on user habits in app stores, with a focus on games. According to the study, 74% of spending in app stores (App Store and Google Play mainly) were driven by games last year.
Besides that, 33% of all downloads of apps worldwide were games, with users spending about 10% of the time of use on devices. According to App Annie, more than 1.1 million titles were launched last year on the App Store and 1.6 million on Google Play.
As for the two main app stores, we know that Google Play tends to have the highest number of downloads (due to the greater number of Android devices) than the App Store, and that was no different in the last year: in 2018, 72% of games were downloaded from the Google store, while the App Store got 28%.

But, as always, the scenario changes when we look at spending at these stores: while Google Play recorded only 36% of consumer spending on games, the App Store accumulated around 64%. Overall, user spending on games grew by 15% per year on both platforms.
The increase in the number of launches is related to the increasing engagement of games with the mobile market, according to the study. Among the reasons for this, say, “perfect marriage” is a growing user base, particularly in developing markets (such as Brazil), where the number of smartphones per person grows each year.

Speaking of Brazilian lands, Brazil is the country among nine other selected markets where users play the most – including the United States, the United Kingdom and China; on the other hand, our country is among the users that least install games, with France leading this ranking.

In addition to enabling an increase in the number of launches, the mobile platform also played an important role in expanding the age range of players. Today, most of the time spent on games comes from users 25 and older; in many cases, these players are not even classified as “gamers”, noted App Annie.
The full survey report for App Annie can be downloaded here.
via TechCrunch