Sensor Tower: Mobile game spending hit $22.2B in 2021 Q1, up 25% from 2020

Consumers spent $22.2 billion on mobile games in 2021’s first quarter, according to market analyst Sensor Tower. This is up a massive 25% from the same period last year.

Most of this growth happened on Google Play, which saw a 31% increase from 2020 Q1 to reach $9.2 billion. The App Store didn’t do too badly itself and grew 21% year-over-year to $13 billion. All of gaming has been seeing growth due to the pandemic, and mobile has been no exception.

“The global pandemic and regional lockdowns have clearly had a major impact on the mobile games industry, with revenue and downloads up substantially in 2020,” Sensor Tower’s Craig Chapple told GamesBeat. “Our forecasts predict that both player spending and installs will continue to rise in 2021, which would mean there is indeed a lasting lift for the sector. However, while player spending is expected to be up in Q2 2021 compared to Q2 2020, downloads may actually decrease in the current quarter due to the outsized increase in installs we saw last year. Growth in installs is then expected to resume from Q3 onward.

“It’s not just the lockdowns that are driving industry-wide growth, however. The top publishers have become masters at live operations, providing substantial amounts of new content and events to keep things fresh and players engaged for the long haul.”

PUBG Mobile was the No. 1 earner during the period, followed by Honor of Kings at No. 2 and Genshin Impact at No. 3.

Mobile games also enjoyed a 5% increase in first-time installs with that number reaching 14 billion during the quarter. Join Clash 3D from Supersonic Studios was Q1’s most downloaded game, followed by Among Us and DOP 2.

“The rise the industry saw in 2020 is really an acceleration of trends we’ve been seeing for years, that consumers are increasingly turning to their smartphones for all facets of life, from entertainment to necessities like shopping and health,” Chapple noted. “These habits will be hard to shake as the world recovers from the pandemic, as the growth seen in Q1 2021 shows. But that said, with lockdowns easing, the growth is not expected to be as fast as last year by the end of 2021, and there are also the changes to the IDFA on iOS that could cause headwinds in the mobile sector.”