The mobile games industry generated $124 billion in revenue in 2023 and is projected to make $195 billion by 2030, according to a new report by GlobalData titled Mobile Gaming - Thematic Intelligence.
Identifying key industry trends, the report predicts the next one to two years of mobile gaming from tech to macroeconomics to regulations, and suggests that "most gamers will embrace mobile gaming in the next few years".
This will be predominantly led by mobile esports, cloud gaming, and the increasingly competitive hardware capabilities of mobile devices; Apple’s iPhone 15 is already able to run console-quality games, after all, and big-budget mobile games are more likely to "attract more publishers and gamers".
"Must-have" expertise
As is well established by now, mobile represents a larger share of the games market than PC and console combined and has become a key facet of many a game maker’s success. GlobalData’s report describes mobile gaming expertise as a "must-have" for every games company today and notes the mobile focus of tech titans like Take-Two, Activision Blizzard and Netflix.
However, Chinese regulations continue to pose a risk to the mobile sector as an unpredictable but ever disruptive factor, with one announcement having wiped $80 billion from Tencent and NetEase’s value virtually overnight last December.
"Regulations around in-app purchases, data privacy, child safety, antitrust, artificial intelligence (AI), and app store commissions will continue to impact all mobile gaming companies," the report suggests.
Bringing context to the findings, GlobalData’s Thematic Intelligence principal analyst Rupantar Guha added: "Mobile gaming revenue grew by 25% in 2020 from the previous year and by a further 10% in 2021. However, in 2022, annual growth dropped to just 3% as rising inflation hit consumer spending. The market showed signs of recovery in 2023, with revenue increasing by 6% compared to 2022."
AppLovin’s Daniel Tchernahovksky recently shared with us how studios can find continued growth in 2024, from AI advances to new creative strategies.
