Apptica & Gamelight: The Mobile Market in Q3 2023
A view on global downloads, and revenue data alongside some engagement metrics.
The companies also highlighted how much time users spend in games of various genres. Data was collected from 37 countries from July to September 2023.
Downloads - Worldwide
iOS
In the third quarter, iOS users downloaded 1.54 billion games in total, constituting 20.4% of all downloads on the platform. This represents a 14.4% decrease from the previous year.
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The most popular categories for downloads on iOS are casual games (269.4 million), action games (212.72 million), and simulators (202 million).
Android
In the third quarter, Android users downloaded 12.36 billion games, which is 30.5% of all downloads on the platform. This reflects a 6.8% decrease compared to the third quarter of 2022.
Revenue - Worldwide
iOS
iOS games earned $5.91 billion in the third quarter, excluding advertising.
The most profitable genres on iOS are RPG ($1.33 billion), strategy ($745 million), and action ($698.97 million).
Android
Android players spent $4.64 billion on games in the third quarter.
They spent the most on RPGs ($930.64 million), followed by strategies ($628.67 million) and casual projects ($520.49 million).
Despite significantly fewer users, iOS continues to outpace Android in revenue, with a market share of 56.01% compared to 43.99% for Android.
Engagement Data
On average, iOS players spend more time (38.69 minutes per day) than Android users (32.17 minutes per day). This refers only to countries participating in the report: the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea.
Candy Crush Saga has the highest playtime in all six countries above.
Card, word, and board games have the highest playtime in the United States on Android. On iOS, the leaders are action games, adventure games, and board projects.
Interestingly, in Japan, RPGs did not even make it to the top three in terms of how much time users spend on them per day. On iOS, card games, casual games, and word games lead. On Android, instead of card games, adaptations of board games take the lead.