State of Mobile Gaming 2024 - Karl Knights, Data.ai

[Music] [Music] [Music] so over to Carl Knights of data AI let launch in let's go for it thank you okay um good morning everyone thank you very much for uh for being here um congratulations to Pocket Gamer on 10 years uh for those of you familiar with uh our state of mobile report as you can

imagine we'll go into kind of top games downloaded all the differences between different markets Etc um but seeing as it's 10 years of Pocket Gamer and I thought we'd have a little bit of audience interaction uh this is the only audience interaction I'm planning and there are no prizes available whatsoever but uh we've been doing this report for about 11 years so who can take a guess or an educated guess of when we did this 10 years ago when Pocket game has started what was the most downloaded game in 2013 raise your hand shout out Doodle Jump good but it's not right Angry Birds Candy Crush congratulations I know as an experts well done uh any guess on the second one Subway Surfers okay as I said no prizes available that's the only audience interaction okay so um my name is Carl I run customer success U at data AI uh who are data AI we are the artists formerly known as appannie um we are the world's uh leading provider of uh Market

intelligence for the uh mobile mobile app ecosystem uh working with a a range of different segments as you can see here but clearly gaming has been integral since our Inception uh 14 years ago um a very quick disclaimer none of the uh estimates I'm going to share here are meant for the purpose of any Financial or investment decisions um and really what I'm going to talk about today is is a number of uh perspectives from our state of uh state of mobile report 202 for so this is uh this is something we pour an enormous amount of resource into at the start of every year um I'm always impressed by our team in terms of how they can evolve and add uh you know New Perspectives new insight so um you'll have opportunities to to download that but I'm going to talk about some of the kind of high level macro perspectives of that some of the genres that were under Fire what were some of the games that really defined 2023 and then uh have a stab at what we uh what we expect in 2024 okay so for those familiar with with this this is where we always start

looking at downloads looking at spend looking at the time that we spend uh within uh within the gaming environment so um to start with uh with downloads we're always still looking at this kind of period of time comparing to the kind of false highs of 2020 2021 um and indeed 2022 looked pretty sad against some of those phenomenal levels of downloads and spend that we experienced during kind of covid um but uh as we look at 2023 in fact it's leveled out quite considerably uh so just a a small decline of 2% that represents around a third of all downloads from the App Stores uh just shy of 88 billion when we look at uh when we look at spend um again you know that that same kind of obsession relative to kind of 2020 2021 um and again we see that kind of flattening out uh fairly considerably however there's an important thing to to to point out here is that that figure does include um data from the China Market market so a number of you may not

be operating in that uh in that market subject to various different restrictions and of course restrictions in terms of usage for anybody residing there so if we actually take out uh the data from China what we've actually seen in 2023 is an increase of 4% in terms of uh consumer spend not a uh not a decline the decline in China was around 11% 2023 on 22 when we look at time uh this is kind of interesting to see that this is you know definitely kind of leveling out now uh we are looking to do other stuff like maybe sleeping eating taking a walk but um this is specifically daily time spent for the top 25 markets across the world and that's kind of leveled out slight decrease uh just less than 40 minutes important to bear in mind that that is an average so obviously Tak into account those that don't game at all um but um as I said just across those top 20 25 markets um one thing that hasn't declined at all and uh through a a

challenging backdrop of 23 is uh is mobile ad spend so that is AD spend across all different sectors not just gaming 362 billion in uh in 2023 um and uh when we look at kind of total hour spent so look looking at all markets so some of those developing markets as well uh again that's increased 7% just shy of 500 billion hours so that's the kind of uh high level backdrop but I wanted to kind of just dive in here and as I just referenced a moment ago in terms of a challenge ing 2023 macroeconomic environment what is the relationship between perhaps what our consumers have seen relative to what they've spent in games and in apps so what we're looking at here specifically for the United States we've taken the disposable income growth index from the oecd and looked at that in terms of its relationship with spend in games on the left and in apps on the right hand side so you can see pretty much yourself across this kind of like six-year period how as um dispos income has uh risen and declined you

know the the spending games has mirrored that pretty closely interestingly we see the the inverse of that when it comes to uh when it comes to apps so you know our kind of Judgment of that is is ultimately that uh some of those apps are seen more as utilities think Spotify YouTube uh Disney plus maybe even Tinder um but uh spending games still uh still discretionary but if we zero in on um on uh the gaming sector specifically what we're looking at here now is a kind of weekly measure of global um mobile games from a downloads and consumer spend perspective it's remained relatively flat slight increase in terms of downloads around kind of U you know 1 Point uh 1.1 billion per week um but a slight increase in uh in spend uh up to a kind of 1.5 billion on a weekly basis uh on the right hand side so uh again important to bear in mind this includes data from the um from the Chinese market

again we remove that we see a 4% uh Improvement year-over-year um there are a number of markets that experience significant growth in 2023 South Korea Brazil turkey and France all experienc double-digit growth did exceptionally well um and as we start to kind of go through this presentation you'll see there's a theme around those games with significantly strong IP were the ones that really won out uh significantly in 2023 so Monopoly go will reference more than once uh EA Sports mobile FC Soccer another one that performed particularly well providing kind of console like experiences gensin impact past four billion in um in consumer spend in 2023 um and when we look at IP compare uh combined with strong distribution you know we see some blowout results uh GTA released uh with with Netflix in the latter half of December uh drove 22 million downloads in just uh in just two weeks so um that

is a is a theme and kind of Segways on to this next slide here when we look at the uh the billion dollar Club so when we're talking about the billion dollar Club here these are as it says there apps to reach a billion dollars in annual Global consumer spend for the first time and um what we started with talking about Candy Crush that reached uh the billion dollars in uh in 2013 um and you can see all the various different uh games primarily and then apps in 2020 with the likes of Tinder um kind of crushed cross that uh threshold of a billion dollars in uh in annual consumer spend so a little bit of a perspective on this uh over, 1500 apps generated more than $10 million in annual revenue in 2023 219 crossed the1 million doll threshold and 13 made it into the uh the billion dollar club and there's some new entrance there with Royal match and garden Scapes uh as well as Google one and and HBO Max um just to kind of point out as well as as um we started this

presentation with with candy crushing as you can see it there in 2013 just a phenomenal performance to maintain that across the last 10 years so that does uh firmly reside as the uh as the as the number one um kind of uh spend uh game of all time um closely followed by honor of Kings which was released in 2015 as you can see made the billion dollar Club in in 2017 all the more impressive for the fact that that has only been available in um in the China Market um which is set to change in uh in 2024 okay so that's some of the kind of high level um kind of going in a level deeper now into um you know some of the genres that uh that kind of LED some of those that were under Fire uh in order to do that we uh we we're using our game IQ product here uh so what is game IQ very quickly it's our taxonomy for classifying apps into various different genres and sub genres that you can see there and what we're looking at here this pie chart is the distribution uh of download specifically so hyper casual um

you know definitely one of those genres that arguably has been under Fire in 2023 as you can hopefully make that out um year-over-year declined uh 7.5% uh the titles that lead there really uh race Master Bridge race going balls magic title um but nevertheless despite that decline the footprint is enormous and we are seeing you know obviously some clear signs of different testing and with different Dynamics as you can see the kind of in um increasing significantly um simulation again this is where we see just kind of a strength of Ip really winning out so uh outfit sevens uh My Talking Tom to uh Tom Talking Friends My Talking Angela to uh dominating the simulation category and match as well so led by Candy Crush again but significant year for Royal match as well so the biggest growth uh category uh that you can see here the biggest growth genre with uh nearly 7% uh increase in downloads year-over-year

uh as we look at that picture for uh Amir no huge change well no change in terms of the the ranks of the different genres that you can see but important to note that the decline in hyper casual is significantly less and the uh the increase in match is significantly more at uh at 14.5% radically different when we start to look at that in terms of APAC um the decline in hyper casual even more pronounced nearly 12% and we see uh kind of RPG titles like gensin impact HJ star rail uh survivor.io and Hero Wars coming in at uh at 8 there and a significant growth of nearly 20% year-over-year in terms of downloads alone looking at spend now uh uh that changes considerably so uh it does require you to look in closely here and see exactly which uh genres um have changed as you can see RPG and strategy dominate nearly 48% of uh of global uh inapp spend is from those two categories

alone an RPG in particular a 24.5 billion more than double the next uh the next genre pretty uh pretty considerably so the likes again gensin impact HJ star rail Pokemon go lineage gem all leading that um uh considerably um again just to kind of touch on Match it's quite interesting here when we look at the data particularly in terms of uh in terms of Royal match just how effective that game has been in terms of finding a new audience format we don't see a huge crossover between Candy Crush and roal match it's only around 10% so you know clearly the the in-game Dynamics and attaching the spend to you know some of the characters have been really effective in driving uh Royal match's performance in 2023 um also we see party coming in at number eight here um so uh led by coin Master but been a huge year for Monopoly go and that's really kind of blown that year-over-year performance of 84% in terms of um inapp spend for the uh for the party category we'll come and look

at that in a bit more detail so uh in terms of air uh the story here is really yeah just how that kind of match category is almost level well is level now with the strategy um genre um so yeah up around 26% year-over-year and party even higher Sports entering there radically different when again we look at um we look at APAC if you remember the 24 billion of the uh kind of global spend uh in RPG games nearly 90 billion of it coming from uh coming from APAC um so there are some of the uh you know as I say some of the genres that were leading some Under Fire and we've already touched on some of those games that really Define 2023 in order to do that we use something called uh mobile performance score very quickly um think of this as a kind of credit score for apps so looking at the kind of indicators of acquisition engagement sentiment and monetization and relative to the kind of genres that we were just looking at in that pie chart uh we're able to kind of give a a

mobile performance score and um Monopoly go was a phenomenal performance in 2023 so um in excess of 96 million downloads uh approaching nearly a billion uh dollars in um in in app spend um you know and it's kind of social interaction capabilities its minigames its offers and you know aggressive uh UA strategy is really what's delivered it uh into the charts for the first time in 2023 at at number two um from a demographic perspective 10% uh kind of leaning towards uh females in uh Americas and AIA that switches around when you look into APAC and a clear leaning towards kind of 25 uh to 34 but uh expect an even bigger year for uh for Monopoly go in 2024 um and one that we've already touched on uh with uh with Royal match so uh again very little Crossover with um with Candy Crush it's finding a new audience and um you know that audience tends to be 45 plus and uh 20% more

likely to be uh to be female um now available in 174 markets globally downloaded over 219 million times approaching around 2.6 in uh in inapp spend and you can see the its rise through the uh through the ranking charts there up to to number two in uh in 2023 so um two games uh phenomenal performance in 23 and uh yeah expect them to be um in the billion dollar Club in uh in 2024 okay so uh just to to to finish trying to give a some kind of um estimation of what will happen uh even further in 2024 so um after the last few years of uh you know some spend decline so 115 to 109 107 on the top chart there we do expect that to uh significantly improve and grow in 2024 so additional 4 billion to be added to in game spend in

2024 um but the the growth of uh non-game um Ina spend is is Will outpace and uh and account for around 40% share which is a pretty significant um progression from uh just kind of three or four years ago even more so we expect you know the continued uh growth of um of mobile ad spend so it's compound annual growth rate of 16.2% bigger in 2024 than 2023 and we expect that to uh to pass the 400 billion uh level in uh in 2024 so um I just have two slides to finish on and uh these are um slightly Shameless plugs but uh we would really encourage um all of you to to join our dayto AI Community this is a new initiative that we set up just in the last couple of months it's a f fantastic place to go and um you know unlock uh new insight um learn grow help us shape data AI but really collaborate with

numerous people in the uh in the industry um if you can't click that QR code then come by our booth at uh G10 on the first floor and equally a lot of the um data that I've shared today is from the state of mobile 20124 so uh if you don't click that QR code then please swing uh swing by our booth and um we'll be happy to uh provide that for you thank you very much for your time have a great rest of the show and uh congratulations Pocket Gamer on 10 years again thank you [Applause]