Sensor Tower: The State of the Mobile Market in 2026
Mobile games for the first time in history earned less than non-gaming apps.
Revenue data is shown as Gross (includes store fees and taxes). Revenue from Android stores in China and D2C revenue are not included.
App market
In 2025, apps were downloaded 149 billion times. This is 0.8% more than last year.
$167 billion was generated in revenue by all apps on iOS and Google Play. Year-over-year growth was 10.6%.
Users spent 5.3 trillion hours in apps in 2025 (+3.8% YoY).
The average user spent 3.6 hours per day in apps in 2025 (+1.1% YoY).
The average user used 34 apps per month (+5.4% YoY). Daily, around 10 apps are used.
Mobile macro trends
India, the US, and Brazil were the leaders in app downloads in 2025. India remains far ahead in first place with 25.5 billion installs.
By revenue, the US is the clear leader ($59 billion in 2025). China ranks second ($22.1 billion), but Sensor Tower only accounts for iOS revenue.
By time spent in apps, India is in first place. Indonesia ranks second (which may surprise some), followed by the US.
For the first time in Sensor Tower’s tracking history, users spent more money in non-gaming apps than in games.
❗️Two things are worth noting here. First, if we include app revenue outside the App Store and Google Play, apps have been earning more than games for quite some time. Second, D2C gaming revenue is not included, so part of IAP revenue is not attributed here.
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Non-gaming app segment analysis
Social networks, AI apps, and utilities lead by downloads.
Despite the AI boom in 2025, AI was not the fastest-growing segment by downloads. Short dramas were, with downloads up 278% YoY. AI apps grew by 148%.
By revenue, social media, streaming apps, and dating services dominate.
AI apps lead in revenue growth (+254% YoY). Short dramas are second (+115%), followed by media editing apps (+71% YoY).
By hours spent, social networks dominate by a wide margin. Users spent more than 2.5 trillion hours in social apps in 2025 (over 90 minutes per user per day).
By absolute installs and IAP revenue, AI apps are in the lead. By time spent, social networks continue to grow strongly.
In 2025, three new apps surpassed $1 billion in IAP revenue: ChatGPT, CapCut, and WeTV. There are no games on this list. The last time this happened was in 2022.
The share of apps with high IAP revenue has been growing rapidly year after year.
The number of “billionaire” apps remains roughly flat in games, while non-gaming apps saw strong growth in 2025 (+33%).
Market saturation: games vs non-gaming apps
Overall, in 2025, the top 1% of apps generated 92.2% of all IAP revenue. That equals $154 billion generated by the top 1%, versus $13.1 billion shared among the remaining 99%.
At the same time, the share of revenue generated outside the top 1% in games has been growing each year and reached 7.5% in 2025. In non-gaming apps, this share has stagnated over the past four years.
State of the gaming market
IAP revenue in 2025 reached $81.75 billion (+1.3% YoY, despite the growing popularity of D2C models). Downloads declined for the second year in a row, falling 7.2% in 2025 to 50.41 billion. However, time spent in games continued to grow, up 0.9% in 2025.
Most IAP revenue growth came from Europe.
Hybrid-casual games were the only segment to grow in IAP revenue. All other segments remained flat.
Hypercasual games were the only segment that did not see a decline in downloads in 2025. All other segments were in the negative zone. Users also spent more time in hypercasual games, including in the largest markets.
Strategy, shooter, and puzzle games were the genres with the strongest IAP revenue growth in 2025. This was driven by titles such as Last War: Survival, Whiteout Survival, Royal Match, Gossip Harbor, and Delta Force.
Strategies were the only genre to grow in downloads in Asia. Geolocation games performed relatively well and remained on a plateau. The steepest download declines were seen in action, RPG, lifestyle games, simulators, and racing games.
By time spent in games, simulators lead. Puzzles rank second, followed by strategy games. Users in Asia played noticeably less overall, while action and shooter games faced a downturn in Europe.
Advertising in mobile games
Sensor Tower highlights that publishers increasingly rely on video creatives (share grew to 53.7%) and Playables (share grew to 13.3%, nearly doubling).
The share of rewarded ads increased significantly, reaching 17.7% (+53.9%).
AppLovin (27.3% market share) and Mintegral (16%) increased their share of the in-app advertising market in 2025. AdMob lost some ground but remains the leader with a 33% market share.
In social traffic, Instagram (35.6% share) and Facebook (33.6%) significantly strengthened their positions. TikTok, according to Sensor Tower, declined to 12.7% (nearly halving). A similar trend was observed for YouTube, which dropped to 12%.
For lifestyle apps and puzzle games worldwide (excluding Latin America), the share of UA spend is higher than their share of IAP revenue. Action and strategy games show a more balanced picture. Casino games consistently generate a higher share of revenue than their share of UA across countries.
Retention in the top 25 games by revenue
❗️Although Sensor Tower shows retention metrics for the top 25 games by revenue, average retention varies significantly by genre and subgenre.
Almost all segments show weaker Day 1 and Day 7 retention. Midcore games outperform other segments on these and all other retention windows.
Leading hybrid-casual games have already surpassed hypercasual leaders at the D1 retention level, and the gap widens even further by Day 7.
Leaders in the midcore genre retain users significantly better than other genres. However, their Day 7 to Day 30 retention is nearly the same as that of casual games.
While the average D7 retention among the top 25 casual games in December 2025 was 14.9%, Sensor Tower reports examples such as Tasty Travel with 22%.
The top 25 midcore games retain 4-5% of their audience over a one-year period. This figure is declining, while it remains more stable in other genres.
Publishers by country
Asian publishers saw the largest revenue growth in 2025, up $2.58 billion, largely driven by Century Games. European studios also grew, adding $0.36 billion.
Publishers from the Middle East (-$0.18 billion) and the US (-$1.78 billion) has revenue decline in 2025.
Tencent is the global leader in IAP revenue, even without counting Miniclip and Supercell, which were tracked separately.
Games live-ops
In 2025, live-ops shifted more toward progression and socialization, and slightly away from pure monetization.
Developers relied less on standard offers and used gacha mechanics of various types much more frequently. This is interesting given the strong regulatory pressure on such mechanics in many countries.
The popularity of milestone-based events grew significantly in 2025, partially replacing traditional quests. Albums also became more popular, along with the addition of new modes that differ from core gameplay.
Nearly all types of social mechanics grew in 2025. Players enjoy playing together, both competing and cooperating toward shared goals.
The growing popularity of PvE mechanics stands out in particular. This appears to echo trends seen on the PC and console market, where PvE-driven titles became one of the main growth drivers in 2025.
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Mobile games and franchises
Mobile devices remain one of the main drivers of installs for franchises worldwide.
Sensor Tower does not show revenue distribution here (likely because the charts are less visually compelling), but highlights the most successful mobile IPs by revenue: Monopoly, Pokémon, and FIFPro (the organization that licenses football players).
Web
Roblox accounts for 74% of all global visits among websites where users can play games. 90% of those visits come from direct traffic (typed URLs or bookmarks), and only 5% are organic.
Despite this popularity, the Roblox store ranked second. The top spot belongs to store.supercell.com with 1.7 billion visits.
To access data for other verticals and explore interactive charts, follow the link.