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Mobile game spending for the first half of 2019 reaches nearly $30 billion

20.1 billion downloads showing a 3.2 per cent increase year-on-year

Mobile game spending for the first half of 2019 reaches nearly $30 billion

Mobile gamers have spent an estimated $29.6 billion across both the App Store and Google Play in the first half of 2019, according to Sensor Tower.

This number is up 11.3 per cent when compared to the first six months of 2018. App Store revenue grew by 7.8 per cent over the previous year to $17.6 billion, with Google Play rising by 16.8 per cent to top out at $12 billion.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings unsurprisingly ranked first for top grossing games globally, earning approximately $728 million. This figure doesn’t even take into account China’s third-party Android stores.

Following this was Sony Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order that generated $628 million before Mixi’s Monster Strike claimed third with $566 million. King’s Candy Crush Saga and Tencent’s PUBG Mobile rounded out the top five.

Mobile's billions

Spending across the App Store and Google Play regarding all apps and games during the first half of the year equalled to $39.7 billion. This was a 15.4 per cent increase over 2018 which brought in $34.4 in revenue from consumers.

Mobile downloads totalled 20.1 billion for the six months, up 3.2 per cent year-on-year. App Store numbers decreased by 1.4 per cent to 4.4 billion, while Google Play grew 4.6 per cent to 15.7 billion.

The three most download mobile titles were said to be Good Job Games’ Color Bump 3D and Tencent’s Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile.

Tencent's Miley Chen will be a speaker at Pocket Gamer Connects Hong Kong on July 17th and 18th.


Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.