Mobile games consumer spending reached $44.7 billion in the first half of 2021, representing a 17.9 per cent rise year-over-year.
That's according to Sensor Tower data, which further revealed that App Store in-game spending grew by 13.5 per cent to hit $26 billion during the same period. Similarly, Google Play picked up the remaining $18.7 billion with a jump of 24.7 per cent over the first half of 2020.
Tencent's Honor of Kings was crowned as the highest-grossing mobile game for the six-month period, accumulating over $1.5 billion. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) previously beat out all other competition to achieve the largest amount of global revenue for the month of May 2021.
The Chinese giant continued its dominance over the market by securing second spot too, thanks to PUBG Mobile firing to just under $1.5 billion. The mobile battle royale surpassed $5 billion in lifetime revenue in March this year.
COVID-19 Impact
Genshin Impact from MiHoYo earned another $848 million to place third, after shooting to $1 billion in its first six months of launch.
Roblox and Coin Master from Moon Active then rounded out the top five at fourth and fifth respectively.
Global downloads, meanwhile, dropped fell by 1.4 per cent from 28.5 billion to 28.1 billion. This was expected due to the huge surge in installs throughout 2020 as a result of the lockdown measures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Among Us from Innersloth was recently confirmed to have made $86 million on mobile in nearly three years.
Last week, PUBG maker Krafton announced its intention to raise $5 billion in South Korea's biggest IPO to date.
