Sensor Tower' State of Mobile Gaming report breaks down how the market evolved in 2024, who the winners were, and what opportunities lay ahead for 2025. As the first quarter of the year comes to an end, industry data confirms that mobile gaming is regaining momentum. While downloads remained stable throughout 2024, key metrics such as in-app purchase revenue, time spent, and session counts have shown an upward trend. A newly released illustrated and interactive 50+ page report provides a data-driven analysis of the industry's most significant trends, covering downloads, revenue, and engagement. It also highlights the top-performing games of 2024 and the factors behind their success. Additionally, the report offers an in-depth examination of mobile game marketing, identifying the ad networks that experienced the highest impression share growth and outlining the three major creative trends that shaped the industry's landscape in 2024.
Mobile gaming in-app purchase revenue grew 4% year over year in 2024, with time spent up 8% and number of sessions up 12%. This growth occurred in spite of the continuing download decline, with developers refocusing on live ops in existing titles.
Players spent $82 billion in mobile game in-app purchases in 2024, growth was mostly seen on iOS, with Android in-app purchase revenue falling flat year over year. Casual games saw the most absolute growth, though Hybridcasual games soared to a 37% increase in in-app purchase revenue year over year.
Mobile games were downloaded 49 billion times, a 7% decline from 2023. Interestingly, this decline was mostly felt by casual games: the same category that saw the most in-app purchase revenue growth.
The most in-app purchase growth was seen in Western markets, with North America seeing a 9% increase and Europe seeing a 14% increase. However, secondary markets also saw significant growth, with Latin America up 13%, the Middle East up 18%, and Oceania up 8%. The only major region to see a decline was Asia, which declined 3% year over year. However, some of this is attributable to the fact that this analysis is in US dollars, which has exhibited notable strength vs several Asian currencies recently.
Monopoly Go! was the big winner of 2024, bringing in the most in-app purchase revenue worldwide. Scopely’s breakout hit, which launched in 2023, combines the beloved Monopoly intellectual property with proven coin looter gameplay. Honor of Kings came in at #2, remaining the largest mid-core title in the world.
Honorable mentions for 2024 include Roblox, Last War: Survival, and Whiteout Survival. Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival are 4x strategy games launched in 2023 that streamlines the gameplay of 4x strategy games while retaining the genre’s strong progression and monetization. Perhaps most notably, these games are very ad-creative-friendly with a universal style that supported success in both the East and West. Developers would do well to take these two examples of success to heart: Last War: Survival saw the most year over year in-app purchase revenue growth of any mobile game in 2024.
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