The Ultra Positive Market Report: Sensor Tower's State of Mobile 2025

[Music] Jonathan brisman censor tow marketing inside Guru in the house welcome to the podcast thank you so much again longtime fan of everything you've been doing so uh really excited to be on and thank you for having me well thank you and you know what let's just jump right in because you released a big big date of the market report and there's plenty of questions to ask but I think we just should just start off with you know if you're looking if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify there's going to be tons of graphs here uh but let's start off with like what's going on on mobile like overall where are we right now what's happening as you mentioned we've released our state of mobile report uh it is quite large I believe like over 95 pages of content covering everything mobile from gaming to social media to fintech so a lot of stuff in there and I encourage anyone to go check it out um

but yeah just starting at a high level um I'd say that the you know the mobile landscape is kind of starting to take shape after several turbulent years you know we had the pandemic and then you know a market correction following the pandemic and we're kind of starting to see what the you know mobile Market's going to look like moving forward and overall I'd say it's looking really strong um again if you are able to see on the screen you can see some of these metrics here I'm also going to try to shout them out for the podcast listeners as well um but we're looking at you know downloads are roughly flat at around you know they're 136 billion this year that's where they've been hovering the last several years between 135 and 140 billion um you know a lot of people have the apps they need uh for the most part and then they're just kind of getting the new ones as they come out so we're kind of seeing that rate um you know staying pretty steady then if we're looking at some of these other metrics time spent you know up a healthy 6% year-over-year so that's a really good sign people still continuing to spend more and more time on their mobile

devices um although I do want to note that that's actually not true in every market so uh in some markets we are actually starting to see it level out a bit and I think we'll get into that more as we go on and then finally looking at in at purchase Revenue which obviously a big big uh metric for people that's how much you know people are paying for their uh Ina purchases subscriptions um also paid apps and games is 150 billion for 2024 up you know 12 and a half% year-over-year so really strong growth there this is across apps and games so everything combined here but yeah I'd say you know overall as we're as we're entering 2025 um the market looks really strong and we're seeing uh you know good growth across pretty much all all Industries right now yeah double digit growth of Revenue in in that purchase alone uh is pretty pretty spectacular I don't know about growth more time spent on devices always sounds crazier um and and not

healthy you me he said healthy I'm like this is not healthy we're spending too much time as it is uh but the interesting part here is the uh the new app downloads like it's pretty much the same as last year would is this would you categorize this Market as mature right now it's definitely not declining but it is mature right attention app and game developers are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games with sensor Tower you get the ultimate Competitive Edge whether it's breaking into new markets fine-tuning your UA strategies or boosting monetization dive into Data like never before track Global Trends across app stores analyze Market leading in purchase and inap AD strategies and Benchmark your performance with real time Insight the best part sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data it helps you turn it into action with intuitive tools

and expert analysis it's everything you need to make smarter faster decisions thousands of appen game Studios from Indie creators to Global Giants trust sensor Tower to help them win so why not you start your free trial today at sensor to.com that is sensor.com yeah I'd say so I mean so like if we're thinking about markets like you know the more established markets like the United States we've seen downloads decline that's not a new thing it's actually you know actually even leading into the pandemic they basically flattened out um so we are starting to see those kind of forces spread across the rest of the globe as they you know as their mobile adoption you know smartphone usage that kind of thing catches up so I'd say that's just kind of a a a consistent Factor we're seeing here um I will also note that uh downloads are still well up

from where they were in 2019 um again I'm sure we'll get into this in more detail but we're talking about that huge surge in 2020 around the pandemic um you know so downloads were well you know they spiked during that time and so even though they're down a little bit year-over-year and from that Peak we saw in 2020 and 2021 they're still way higher than they were in 2019 so I think this is kind of where we're starting to see the market settle a little bit got it okay so more time on devices more more money spend but not per se more apps I think what will be interesting is talk about more about mobile gaming I since that's the the most of our audience and I'm just going to open up another um another graph you had here and this is this is on mobile gaming and mobile game download so in terms of mobile game cannot purchase Revenue growth we're seeing minor growth very very minor like we're talking about 4% you know that's uh pretty much on par

with inflation at the moment and in terms of download growth I think we shouldn't be even talking about download growth we should be talking about download um decline so is uh is mobile gaming the one that is kind of Bringing Down the overall app um downloads down game devs we know that great gameplay is what players love but integrating metagame features like challenges progression rewards is crucial for retention and monetization however coding them is a tedious and timeconsuming process that's why top Studios have turned to hero hero provides a complete Suite of battl tested metagame features that are quick to implement letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience ready to ship fully featured engaging games check out hero today by clicking the link below as you mentioned we're looking at 81 billion in Revenue uh you know in that purchase revenue for the mobile gaming side of things which is up as you mentioned 4% year-over-year

um this is I think you know a good thing that it's a bounceback from uh back-to-back years of declines that we saw in 2021 um but you know it does lag for example non-gaming saw 25% year-over-year growth last year in in at purchase Revenue um the gaming still takes the The Lion Share it's still more than half of the total Ina purchase revenue on mobile but the Gap is closing pretty quickly so I think you know we would not be surprised to see you know non-gaming catch up over the next couple of years in terms of that total total revenue between uh gaming and non-gaming and then yeah you mentioned downloads uh down 6% year-over-year to just under 50 billion globally um you know I think again there's a lot of factors at play here and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of them in more detail as we're as we're discussing we saw a lot of challenges in 2021 and 2022 that you know caused that decline um you know I think there's the welld discussed topics um like the

deprecation of idfa that made it more challenging to for mobile gaming companies to find the right user base the Right audience um we also had you know things like the release of web or the more prominent use of web stores so I do want to note this again all only includes iOS and Google play so to be honest you know you mentioned 4% year-over-year roughly the same as inflation um we're a little bit more optimistic about the global Mark you know the the mobile gaming Market globally just because because um you know this doesn't necessarily capture all of the revenue and we're seeing maybe a little bit more of a share going to those web stores over time but then I think finally again the the third thing that maybe a little bit of an underestimated Factor um especially because we saw impact the non-gaming side as well is just the again the correction from the pandemic um you know the mobile gaming Market was doing so so well with seing such rapid growth in 2020 and 2021 um you know I think we were due for just a a little bit of a correction I mean even just putting it

into perspective I think you know we are seeing uh you know things like 25% year over-year growth in Revenue in 2020 and then another 10% in 2021 so a lot of what we're seeing here even though you know year-over-year these numbers you know look a little bit modest I think if we take a little if we are able to take a step back and take a little bit of a longer term view looking you know pre- pandemic and trying to forecast what we'd expect going forward um from my perspective I'm actually a little bit more optimistic that we're going to see um you know growth return maybe more in the 5 to 10% range next year is what I'd be hoping for okay so so you're saying that in purchas growth will ferate going forward but what caused it to grow even now 4% compared to the decline before several factors and you know some of the ones are honestly based on what uh caused the declines in the first place so one just being the market correcting I think that's going to naturally boost things

back up again after those down years um I also think it just took developers naturally it makes sense it took them a couple of years to figure out how to operate in this new world um and so we're starting to see them find out ways to do that and uh find success um I'm sure we'll get into some specific examples in just a little bit um so I think that's a driver too I mean honestly and they think you know some of the challenges are also a little bit more local so for example like Japan's a market Market where we're seeing declines partially just due to economic factors in the in the region and also because you know we measure things in US dollars so a weaker currency means that you know the revenue on our platform is going to look lower um and so yeah I mean I think as we even at the end of 2024 we're starting to see Japan turn the corner and get Positive Growth again and so that could actually have a decent boosting effect on the rest of the world um if we exclude China Japan and Korea in a purchase Vue actually climb 9%

year-over-year so again a lot of the challenges tended to be a little bit more Regional and we're already seeing the market kind of bounce back uh across a lot of the rest of the globe like Europe uh you know America as uh as a Publishers adjust to kind of this new environment we're looking at here that's that's that's thing I didn't take into that account so if you say if we exclude China in Japan two key Avan markets then the inaer growth would be at 9% yep correct so yeah again it looks a lot better if you include exclude some of those key markets of course those are big those are huge markets so those are very important to follow yeah but they're also close markets like Japan Korea China all extremely aw markets I mean China is probably the size of the US in terms of uh Market Revenue maybe even larger who knows but um but there's no access for Western developers so it's kind of Point lifting and looking at those markets true and I do think honestly that actually reminds me that there's

probably another thing we can look at here to for um you know I think that would be interesting for game developers is a lot of the decline we saw in you know something that was pulling down the average in 2024 was also pretty specific to um to RPGs which again are more popular in some of those um APAC markets and so you know if we took out RPGs you're looking at more like other genres like strategy action um puzzle Casino things like that again I think be seeing much more Healthy Growth across the board so um overall that's another reason I'm optimistic for the market moving forward is that that it does seem like some of the some of the declines were pretty limited to certain areas and I think those will start to level out and those were definitely pulling down the overall average in 2024 well that's a super positive message well talking about positive messages the other one is that that I like to look at and you have in your in your report you have uh the number of apps surpassing 10 million surpassing

100 million surpassing you know 1 billion perhaps those are you know left for a very few but even looking at apps that are making 10 million or more I think that's a that's you know sustainable business for many many startups so that's a that's kind of like a a metric healthiness of the market and when when we're looking at this graph it shows that the amount of of uh of apps that are making over 10 million uh in annual in purchase revenues is steadily in increasing and actually increased quite significantly in 2024 can you talk a little bit about that step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition manded subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola

powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success sure um again I think uh the the game non-game split is pretty interesting here so a lot of the growth we've been seeing in terms of like you know making the 10 million 100 million dollar um barriers is coming from non-games um you know even just thinking of things like AI all these AI chatbot apps and things like that entering the market um is really helped boosting this but again it's something we're seeing across a non- gaming space as I think their monetization kind of catches up gaming was got off to a huge start and was you know way more sophisticated early on in monetization on mobile and we're just seeing non-gaming I think kind of close that Gap a little bit um and have been for you know I guess most of the past decade um so yeah I mean I think it's uh you know that's explaining a lot of the growth overall if we look

at games in particular you'll see it's pretty much just like for example with the $10 million plus it's pretty much just leveled out at you know between 800 and 900 games uh reaching the threshold each year um and again I just think that has to do with a lot of the other Market forces we were talking about um where you know it's still very possible for these games to reach these thresholds it's just become a little bit more challenging in this environment um another thing that I do want to point out too that we've been noticing and we just you know go into a little bit more detail in in the report is it's gotten a little bit harder for new games to enter the market um so again with some of these you know the changes to you know the Privacy changes and things like that it has been more challenging for new games um so that's another Trend we've been noticing um again far from impossible we'll talk about you know as you can see on the screen here there's some really really good uh recent launches that are even reaching a billion dollars so it's very possible to

break through but we are seeing you know it's more challenging than it was even five years ago for new games to you know reach the top 1,000 uh by revenue or by downloads in the year that they launch yeah in in the graph so in the graph it's showing games that reach 1 billion in annual Global in purchase revenue for the first time uh in 2024 we got dungeon and fighter so this is game out of China in China uh we got the white out survival in last war I think they were both launch in 2023 yep that's correct 2020 yeah yeah so again two games out of China with extremely misleading uh ads and Incredibly aggressive monetization tactic and we got brawl Stars Crossing 1 billion Mar that game was released in 2018 so it took that game quite a hot minute to get over 1 billion super un def F faster but brawl Stars kicked in the the heavy gear

for for lion yeah they yeah seriously I mean I think we can maybe go into these one by one so starting with you know you mentioned last war white out survival I think pretty similar strategies overall um you know last war for example they had more faster Revenue growth than any other mobile game in uh in 2024 so you know more Revenue growth than monop go more than dungeon dungeon and fighter so just kind of incredible success um and yeah he ranked even number five in total revenue like among games uh in 2024 so ahead of Candy Crush even so again just kind of just phenomenally successful year for for last war again I guess you have to be to reach a billion dollars for the first time you have you played that game I didn't but I have seen the ads so i' got a little bit of an experience I'm also not install I'm like I'm looking at it as like not a Spyro but something that is going to deplete my bank account almost like a virus so

I'm not gonna even touch it just like yeah it's funny it's like that I feel like it reminds me almost of like a Tik Tok in terms of like you know it's like oh I'm almost like this this this will get me too hooked it's like like yeah it's like if you download it I can't like it's just gonna I'm gonna start watching videos for three hours so it's like I just I need to like not let myself even just get started exactly nothing malicious I know my friend has spent a car's worth on that money so I'm like I'm good I'm not going to install that one yep um yeah so then talking about like you know how they were able to do this I think one thing is that they had like their UA strategy in mind when they were developing the game I mean again you're talking about the ads really simple gameplay that you can even like have in the background of like Tik to and things like that so you can kind of get it to go a little bit viral that way where people are being exposed to the game um especially for a strategy game you know it's it looks simple it's a lot easier for people to pick up and start playing but then you also mentioned it's got

kind of those more I mean it's you know what we are classifying is these hybrid casual same with white out survival where you use that kind of mix of almost like hyper casual style a little bit ad monetization combined with some midcore elements to kind of improve engagement keep people playing and then you know monetize through the inap purchases as well um so you know I think these are two obviously two of the biggest examples of the hybrid casual success um kind of using those strategies do you cator do you categorize these games as hybrid casual I mean the way I see it like there's nothing hybrid casual in them other than the fake ads and fake mini game other than that it's a typical Forex game yeah I mean for us it has to do I think with a lot of the it's just you know their monetization strategy so it's you know the combination of you know using the the uh you know and monetization with kind of that inapp purchase Revenue as well um and so I actually don't I don't know for sure if

they still both I know white out one of them may have actually removed ads and no longer monetized this that way um but I believe they both started out that way um so yeah it's possible I'll have to check we might not classify them both as hybrid casual anymore but I believe they both kind of started that way I would really doubt it because these games you know are very they're big games even though they look cheap and then the secondly I don't think they make significant portion of their revenue through ads because they rely quite heavily on retention uh and engagement and the more ads you show to a retained player the less value there is from that and of course day monetized through all the competitive setting so anyway details uh let's move on sorry for for no no worries no it's helpful um and uh yeah so I mean I think those are you know two kind of similar use cases talking about um last war and white out survival um dungeon fighter as you obviously mentioned that's up you know a pretty special case just relying on already having a huge audience in China specifically released by 10 cent so um

you know going to be successful there and then I think you know brawl stars is maybe the most interesting case from what we're looking at because you mentioned it's been you know a title that's been around for a while and we kind of just see saw it just take off in 2024 seemingly out of nowhere um and I think this reflects again kind of what we were talking about where Publishers are starting to um game developers are figuring out how to operate in this new system so one thing that we found some of these established you know developers doing is focusing more on their existing titles than trying to launch new games um you know again we mentioned how it's more challenging for new games to ex succeed in this environment so it's not true with you know just supercells games we're seeing it with a lot of other you know games that have been around forever like you know like your Candy Crush um Roblox things like that that are doing really really well and I think a lot of it does have to do with just focus from the publisher so you know super eles focusing on its existing titles and you

know uh isn't even you know it uh ended its soft launch games got rid of those so it's not even thinking about them anymore and is you know focusing on um games like brawl stars and also focused on you know live Ops um things like that events across the globe um making sure things are you know localized so can find success across the globe including you know both eastern and western markets and so I think that was one one of the ways that it was really able to find success this year that I think we're seeing a lot of other Publishers do mentioning that that they also focused on Performance Marketing for the first time so I think before that like I think that's uh that's the major driver of Revenue of course the liveops need to be there but they have been you know live for a very long time but it seems like when you look at the download curve that's that's what would really shut off during the uh the 2024 so I think that you influx of new users tens of millions kind of helps as well for sure and I

think another thing that we're going to see across the globe I mean and I think with um most you know with again dungeon fighter I feel like as the exception here is that a lot of the games that we're finding to be successful now are also kind of broadly appealing so they are able you know like you mentioned they're able to you know it's like okay we want to focus on you know these certain markets we can go in Europe and APAC and you know the US and it's going to work across all those places of course you need different strategies in each of those places but the game's going to have appeal in each of those markets and um that's another thing that's consistent with you know the three of those four you know the the the one that's only in China as the exception is that they are all three of these all three of those games are successful in the US in some of the top uh markets in Asia and in Europe and even you know markets like the Middle East you know I think uh Saudi Arabia ranks as a top 10 market for um for a lot of of these games as well so you know we're seeing you know the US Korea

Japan Germany Saudi Arabia it's just they're very much a global appeal and I think that's another way um that game developers can kind of think about how to if you really want if you're going to try to make a billion dollar game you do have to be successful everywhere and it also does help insulate you from that risk we were talking about earlier where some markets you know might be declining you're able to weather that better if you know you have appeal across the globe yeah put some effort in t markets that will be probably the uh the the way to move like not every Market is as important natur different games have different affinity and different markets but if you have good Traction in Saudi Arabia let's say for example or overall in the Gulf States maybe you should focus on that maybe you should set up uh operations even in minimal format country managers and so forth to to uh to double down on that that's uh that's probably what's going to be happening with uh with many companies in the future yeah definitely and again of course it's easier said than done you

have to know your you have to know the markets know the regions um it does take work but um again with these we're talking the billion dollar games they have been able to do that yeah um anything else you can take out of the uh the trends like we're definitely kind of looking at at the top games and I mean there's apps 2022 Google one last year there was WE TV so Chinese apps coming in there seems to be more and more Chinese game if you start you know kind of zooming out there's honor of kings came before but this is naturally this is zooming out and looking at the market as a whole it's it's Western games it's Chinese and it's Japanese that's what you can kind of see from here yep yeah and just looking I mean these are again just because it's hard to reach a billion dollars it's you know it's going to be a relatively uh small you know small population we're looking at here but I'd say that's generally true you know I think we will see more non- games enter this as well so um we'll see that continue to happen

it's actually kind of interesting I think that we've only seen one noname do it in the past two years while over the same period we've seen six games I do want to also call out again nothing not nothing newsbreaking here but another way to really find success on mobile uh is even just looking back to last year Monopoly go because I don't want to under count that how successful of a launch that was it even like dragged up the total average for for the new releases like it looked like new releases actually had a great year last year and a lot of that was just monop go so again the power of having a strong IP can still break through today I mean I think so some of the other successes if we're looking for how do you like you know thinking about like Pokemon TCG pocket things like that if you can successfully launch a game with that powerful IP that can be another way to help you break through yeah I for a long time I didn't hear I didn't think I would hear that for mobile that you you'd be using outside IP because for the longest time we didn't we came up with our own IPS but now it's like back to the basics get a big globally um you

know uh fored it build a proven monetization engine behind that and you're good to go yeah totally and again it's you know maybe a little bit of a a simpler strategy but also po more more expensive yeah and of course multi hundred million doll marketing budgets behind it and so forth so there's that but um but yeah it's what goes in into a mature Market one thing that I that I found really interesting so I don't know if this was in presentation or was it in my own this looks like my own deck that I've thankfully gotten from censor Tower so this one is uh for the uh for the listeners it's gaming a purchase Revenue share on App Store uh and how it has evolved over time so it goes between 2017 to 2024 on looking at the mobile gaming in at purchase Reven rues and then it looks

the graph looks at the um the portion of app and game revenue and on App Store alone it looks like apps are now generating more than 50% of all the Ina purchase revenues can you talk about this trend because looking at last couple of years apps are the ones that are driving the revenue yeah um yeah so this is really interesting and yeah very glad to see you using our data like this it's you know finding super interesting Trends I actually noticed uh I saw this on uh um one of the prediction pieces I believe on your site the other day I think there's several factors here and some of it may not concern gaming as much some may in terms of competition from non-gaming um you know I think one of the drivers is just that again apps were behind kind of behind in terms of monetization um for a while they were just focusing on subscription model so I'm even let we can bring up Tik Tok as an example so Tik Tok had $6 billion doll in consumer spend on mobile last

year and yeah and you're shaking your head I mean no other app or game even reach three billion so it's more than double the next competitor so it's just yeah wild numbers here and it monetizes primarily through just you know these onetime Ina purchases to buy coins to te creators and you know of course Tic Tac only gets you know a cut of that the creator also gets some of a share of that too so you know in terms of total revenue for the company it's not going to be that six billion you know figure but still we're talking about huge amounts of money from this monetization strategy that no one had even thought of you know probably as you know five seven years ago um you know for by comparison Tik Tok was only making $180,000 a year from inapp purchases in 2019 so just five years ago it went from 180,000 to um yeah to six billion um so yeah pretty wild growth there and uh and you know it's an entirely new strategy for non- gaming before that they almost

entirely used um the subscription model so I think that's one of the areas we're seeing a lot of growth is just uh non-gaming kind of catching up with their strategies um and then you I think another Factor too is just PE uh people the broader population becoming more comfortable paying for things on their phones so I do want to call out that I think a portion of this too might just be people paying for their streaming service you know their Netflix um paying for YouTube premium things like that on their mobile devices rather than going for uh going through the like through webs so doing it on the computer meaning we wouldn't be capturing that Revenue here so I think that's part of it too is that we're just capturing a larger share of um app spending than we used to be so that's another Factor um that may be a little bit less concerning to games because you know people are still spending the money is just going through their mobile phone rather than on the web in terms of what lessons I think games can learn because I think that's

kind of an interesting question here too um I think one thing that non-games have been doing is uh uh diversifying their strategies a lot more and obviously this is something games have been doing for a while um but again it used to be almost entirely the subscription so every single top noname just Ed the subscription model and that was it and then you know Tik Tok kind of I think got everyone out of that mindset by showing that you could succeed in another way and so we're seeing other ways to do it of course A lot of these apps also monetize through ads so you know you've got the big social networks but you know now you have in or meta apps like Instagram adding Instagram badges to try to compete with Tik toac you know coins or you have Snapchat adding a subscription um you know whereas it used to only monetized through ads um but even in things like the dating space if we look at hinge um hinge dating app um it was a subscription focused app and then it started adding

like these bundles of roses so these one time Ina purchases that you could buy as an added benefit and that really helped boost its revenue and also I think you know another benefit for these apps is it it does diversify their their strategy a bit which does make them a little bit more insulated for you know the ups and downs of the markets across you know maybe people are getting tired subscription fatigue and they don't want to pay for as many subscriptions having a boost from those one-time purchases can help as well um so again I know it's a pretty broad strategy but um it is something that we are seeing on the non-gaming side this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps sler the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps fer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven

insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps fer where your app's potential meets performance so diversifying your Revenue model and unlike games they didn't diversify their revenue model by trying to monetize the non-payers with endless stream of ads yeah I think that's that's definitely true and I think you know with again like the the deprecation of IDF and the challenges in advertising that I mean cross gaming and non-gaming I mean I think it was true for the social companies as well that you know monetized a lot through ads it just showed that by having being totally reliant on one monetization method made you a little bit more vulnerable to you know huge Market forces like that I think there's possibility for these develop you know for game developers app developers to become more creative with these ideas um just because again I mean it's with Tik Tok as an example I think it just kind of if you'd asked me five years ago if that was going to be that

successful I would have said it was impossible so I think you know there there certainly are probably areas of opportunity for someone who is created enough to explore it when I look at the graph on the right so not say I I have two graphs here left just showing that the uh the revenue from games has been even because the revenue in Asia have been declining versus you know us the markets has grown a little bit and that evens out to zero growth uh but when you look at the uh the app Revenue growing as you said a lot of it is is diversification of business model and the diversification comes through inap purchase and inap purchases are coming through adding new features new elements gamifying the apps have you as a market Guru how much have you been hearing about the gamification part yeah it's it's actually it's an interesting one because i' say it's been more on like a case-by case basis it's you know like almost like seeing it at a case study level it's you know something that we're seeing several apps do but it's not like completely widespread yet um I'm thinking of an example is like du lingo I think is probably a good example um

where you know gamification also AI I mean they recently added some new really interesting AI features like the ability to you have like actually like almost like a a FaceTime like a call with one of their their cartoon characters and you can converse in the language with the character um so yeah again really interesting stuff they're doing but they also do have like a game you know a game like uh kind of almost like progression thing that you can do with that higher tier subscription um so again it's seen with something we're seeing with I think some of the most Innovative players on the the non-gaming side where they're starting to explore you know the gamification of their apps and again then you get higher engagement you get higher retention you know du lingo is so popular you have people who are paying money to fix their streaks you know because they want to make sure that they keep their streak alive in the app um so yeah you get people to really care about um their engagement in the app and in this case also learning a language I

think it's a really interesting combination and um again I think just one example of like an app that's kind of like you know I think it's a good one to watch because I seem to be at The Cutting Edge of some of these strategies um and then you know it's interesting how they monetize it there too because as I mentioned they I think they released a higher tier subscription so they almost have these different levels where for some of these features like you know their their inapp kind of game style um like their their AI powered video calls those are going to be at the higher subscription tier so for those users who are really engaged with the app there yeah duelingo is of course fascinating example I wouldn't say that it teaches you a language uh it just teach you a few different words but let's be honest nobody has learned a language through dualingo yeah so so maybe maybe maybe we're talking about it all wrong maybe it is just a game for people like that's why this it's way more of a game it's way more of a game and it gives you that perspective of like well I'm not just playing Candy Crush you know it's it's the same thing as saying like uh puzzle game will

increase your your because you're solving so many puzzles oh yeah I remember those and like yeah those games like brain test and like brain I back in the day yeah can won't increase that uh you can tell yourself that don't increase your IQ but no you're just soling puzzles and having fun same thing I think with duing no doesn't increase your ability to learn languages but you're having fun you're you're feeling that you're you're you know benefiting from it so I I I find that fascinating and I find it really not even fascinating I find it I find the graph like this extremely positive for the games people I don't know what the industry per se but the games people because a lot of people have been joining these app companies helping them to gamify by gamifying I mean adding progression mechanics adding mization mechanic really looking at at customer Journeys and and then player Journeys and adding those engagement mechanic that that that made these more stickier better monetizing and so if

games people are getting jobs that are related to games even though it's outside directly of games I think that's a very positive thing so totally good for apps to grow yep and we're starting I mean I think again to that point like the line can kind of blur we're seeing games you know for a while non- games have been learning from gaming we're seeing games even start to learn from non- games too and so you're kind of getting that where the industries are able to actually kind of learn from each other you know that actually brought to mind one that we're seeing huge growth on the non-game side is these short drama apps so I know you're familiar with some of them like drama box real short short Max and so those were each of those was in the top 15 by year-over-year Revenue growth in 2024 so really among non- games which is really impressive considering we've talked about how much non- gaming is growing so all the top players are growing and even still three of these you know smaller newer apps were able to achieve just huge growth with the these you know short dramas and one of them you know

real short I think is one a good one to call out because that's one where sensor Tower uniquely classifies it as both a game and a non-game because they have like this interactive Story game component inside the app as well as well as you know that short drama so we classify it as streaming and we classify it as a game and so talking about some of the lines being blurred or even like talking about dualingo kind of having like the game is kind of like a game for people I think that is something we're going to continue to see where the lines might blur a little in terms of what these are and I think that means that gaming will continue to try to look to non-games as well to see what they're doing I think it's going to be more relevant as we move forward compared to you know where it was 10 years ago maybe I'm just old but but but it feels like I'd be more motivated to work on a game that has a positive effect like no offense on White Night survival or what not like like I don't think people are having a positive effect but then again you go to dualingo maybe you don't learn and new language but you will learn a lot of words and you will have a good

streak of mini learning I think it's good for your brain there's a lot of positivity that comes through investing time and money in that app versus others and so when those lines blur it gives game developers game professionals opportunity to work on gaming or games that also do something positive for sure I mean honestly like yeah personally speaking those are the those are the type of games I'm looking for right you know there's for me there's a Time in a place for like the you know the kind of like the Mindless games too where you know you're on an airplane or something and you just want to something to pass the time but um but yeah I mean that's like you know personally speaking that's what I'm looking for especially if it makes good business so I mean dueling was like $9 billion Company by now anyway uh moving away from from Dingo and just talking a little bit more about apps and games the average user spends 500 hours annually on mobile and when you think about this and and you think about the different ratios um how can games compete with a

bigger F of this time given the rise of of entertainment and productivity apps and and especially social media apps like I I noticed YouTube for me is the number one thing I open up probably for somebody younger it's Tik Tok and it's hard to compete against that yeah totally and I'll say you're not alone with YouTube I believe that is the top app globally by time spent and Tik Tok is number two I think and those are well up there like again compared to even things like Netflix like people just spend so much time on those apps those you know which we classify as social media just kind of are well ahead of everything else and are really driving the overall time spent yeah so I mean it's a good question even to put the number you gave at the beginning in more perspective we actually average that was average just over everybody on Earth so not just iOS and Google Play users so that number is actually pretty like even low that's just $500 hour for every single person on Earth have a smartphone don't have a smartphone so really you know we were looking at more like three and a half out for iOS and Google Play users three and a half hours a day so

you do the math there we're looking like close to 1300 hours per year on mobile so again just huge amounts of time being spent in terms of this is actually an interesting topic too because you know sometimes when I do this report I'm you have a good sense generally of a lot of the trends they're kind of in line with what we're expecting as we monitor Trends over the years this was one that actually surprised me a little bit was that we did see times you know while we saw time spent climb globally it was driven largely by certain markets like India and in the US it actually declined for the first time ever just barely it barely declined but I still think that's notable given that we've never seen time spent on mobile ever decline before and we are seeing it level off in you know the UK and Japan and some of these other key markets which you know I think fits kind of a trend we've been seeing with you know the digital fatigue I'm going to put in quotes where people are getting tired a little bit of spending as much time on their phones in certain markets so in the US for example time

spent on social media actually did Decline year-over-year and it declined on streaming and dating too so some of these like you know these what you think of as maybe digital for first kind of areas we're seeing declines in time spent for the first time ever again still really high numbers like again three and a half hours per day on mobile people are spending their time on mobile but I do think it's worth uh worth pointing out there and um one one thing I did I I checked before because we don't actually have it in the report but I checked before the call was that gaming actually did still climb in terms of time spent in the US it was like about 3% growth year-over-year but I do think that's notable that the digital fatigue has not fully hit gaming yet so that's I think a very good sign for the gaming Market that as people are spending less time streaming or at least streaming on their phones they are still playing mobile games but still I think you know some lessons we can kind of learn from time spent leveling out a bit is that what as you know as we're seeing that as we have been discussing you know

revenue for non games is still you know soaring including in markets like the US like people are still spending money on social media they're spending money on streaming they're spending money on dating so all these areas where people are spending less time they're still spending more money and so I think there's been a shift where with this digital fatigue people are still happy to use their phones when they're getting high quality value out of it that they're willing to pay for so maybe the focus shouldn't necessarily be on can we get this user to spend more time in the app it's how can we make sure that time's really high quality and they're getting something out of it so they're still willing you know they're still happy to pay for that service and I do think that's something we might see on the gaming side a little bit more as well so again I think Pokemon pocket as a as an example there where you can you can play the game for you know you can open it twice a day and get a lot of value out of it with very little time spent in the game itself and I think you know that's something we've been kind of seeing on the non-gaming side where again maybe demanding less of people's time is actually an okay thing as long

as they're still really enjoying it and getting a lot of value out of it too do you see when when you look at the uh the increase in engagement do you see the engagement increase in sort of a background apps or active apps or is there like a difference because like for like let's say YouTube as an example I think it's half and half I think like when I consider my own YouTube usage and when I see it around like people might listen to YouTube or there's a podcast going on that necessarily watch it's kind of like on the on the background same thing with Spotify and and you know Google meets it's for maybe for people have background but like do you see the difference there yeah I believe we only capture when it's in the foreground so um you know iOS and Google Play have slightly different methodologies for how they capture it and so that affects how we classify it as well but I believe it is only in the foreground so that's why you know when we're looking at something like Spotify we we would be we're looking at when you're actually looking at the Spotify app so if you're just listening to music that's not being captured so again when we're talking

about three and a half hours per day on mobile that is like actively using using the apps um you know having them open looking at the screen that kind of thing so yeah again I think yeah even perspective how much people are spending on their phones it's these are these are huge numbers we're talking about if you look at your screen time reports it's scary yeah you're like and this is physically impossible this is not true there must be an error in the data and you start going in it's like oh yeah yeah the zoom calls oh yeah the of course and then you start watching how much time you spent on YouTube like for me personally it's it's pretty crazy but that's what that's like a TV that is always on the background totally yeah and it's they just yeah it's and it's just so easy to just you know you're you know you have 15minute break you can just hop on do you know stay on watch a couple videos an hour done yeah exactly and so now I've noticed that Spotify is running on the background but actually the screen is on cuz it's showing the podcast going and it's I think we're just going to be pushing these numbers up I don't know what time we hit like 25

hours out of the day we're watching yeah we're going if once we reporting that that's when you maybe start uh start questioning our data that's how it actually counts on iOS it counts to multiscreen uh usage because like I can assure you have not watched YouTube kids that much yeah yeah they they're able to do it per user account yeah that it's true so so that that probably is checking up the number a little bit but yeah the the apps are ever more engaging and that is you know in many times it's a question for game developers because we're thinking of like how can we how can we be the number one or the number two on on on the users entertainment funnel and and even anecdotally thinking like of course you walk in a in um in an airplane you will see some people streaming but you see a lot of people playing games because they're not online but if you walk to to a bus stop or any kind of a public transport then very few is actually playing now you see mostly people in social media or streaming

something yeah I think it's true and it's um and again it's social media so like one of the things we we have in the report is we do break it down across all the different sub genres the total time spent on the non-gaming side and social media just is so far ahead of everyone else it's you know I think it's looking at this like two almost 2.4 trillion hours in social media followed by like 600 billion so billion not trillion in social messaging and then you know if we're looking at like streaming it's more like 70 billion so it's just orders of magnitude above everything else but I do think again so much of that is just driven by by these big favorites you know YouTube Tik Tok and I do think you know that's something everyone games and non-games in terms of the attention battle that's who you're you're kind of battling with because they just take so much of people's user attention yeah yeah yeah of course and we always talk about it games need to be more social to retain like what's more social than a social

media or or a messaging app like yeah it's like are you just trying to trying to replicate something that in your is where you're never going to achieve the goal just because that's like actually what it's focused on yeah I yeah um talking about okay a couple more things I wanted to ask you about these substantial concentrated markets so China Japan South Korea actually in the order of South Korea Japan and then finally China I think China the most difficult Market due to the uh even governmental obstacles that they've set for games as a whole let alone externally developed games and actually let's not even talk about China but Japan and South Korea how does like how do localization Trends affect these the international developers looking to penetrate these markets are there success cases of recent years where somebody has been able to build substantial business in those Market yeah I mean I think there is and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier about you know these top games needing to be successful in some of these markets and I think

it's just pain I mean because you know they they're each they're so specific right what is popular in those markets I think so much comes down to actually understanding the market so investing more in you know whether it's actually have having people in those markets to understand the gaming you know what players actually want to play and so they can help advise your strategy there so or just investing more in strategy there because it's just you know it's going to be more expensive given the fact that you might need an entirely new entirely different strategy than what you use in Western markets um you know again like looking at apps like brawl star set we're able to find success across the globe I think you know when you're developing the game thinking of some of these fact keeping some of these factors in mind if you're not going to you know change the gameplay change the art style for these markets you have to have something that works across markets and I think like you know supercell does a good job with that with you know their their art style is just kind of generally appealing and will work in in those markets so even in in terms of developing the games I think keeping

that Global appeal in mind is really important and then you know just also having events tailored to the region so like the liveops for you know those regions and things like that you know it will of course take that investment to to set all that up and make everything localized make it actually fit the market but I do think as we're kind of seeing some of these successes become more Global as competition's going to become more Global that might be what it actually takes to to kind of reach the Pinnacle on mobile is you do need to find success in all these markets and it will it'll be worth that investment there good good that you mentioned the the global appeal so making a game with Vikings might sound really really cool if you live the 200 like what no idea what that is yeah well maybe but it's just like so not interesting because you're not tied to it at all the same way as as some kind of like a Three Kingdoms type of a game would be very not interesting for us because we just don't know the history and and aspects of it uh but you mentioned supercell and that's a that's a good mention there because like I think they're the biggest

publisher in South Korea um I'd have to check that sounds sounds possible at least but they also have a big team in South Korea so just to be clear and and and the localization doesn't mean that I'm going to Asia I'm going to add dragons and pandas like of course not it's a this is global entertainment World of Warcraft is you know or League of Legends or fortnite they're all appreciated across the globe but it's probably more of like how do you culturalizing how well your game is localized what kind of you know even onside events how do you promote your game inside those markets how do you communicate to the community and that's where it comes with having the appeal in key Market yeah I mean yeah I think those are like Yeah by far far in away some of the biggest factors here and again it just it does take takes the focus you know and we are seeing that more ways you know again mentioning supercell if they're going to be less focused on launching new games they can maybe devote a little bit more of those resources to localization efforts to actually making sure that they are able to find success in these

new markets and I do think that's something we are actually observing work for them and a few other examples as well and even things like you know different monetization strategies right different different inap purchase uh you know methods are going to work in different markets too so like you really have to kind of understand these markets and understand what's going to work and it's not a you can't just again just create one game and and expect it to work in all these across you know across the globe but I do you know it's cool to actually see a little bit more of games finding success in some of these markets like you mentioned Japan and Korea specifically that hadn't you know that been traditionally really hard to break into for like I'd say Western Publishers generally and then you know I also think as those markets see you know we mentioned challenges to like RPGs I do think that might potentially see you know we might see more potential for things like strategy games to kind of replace some of that market there yeah and it's also important that developers start looking at or probably just look at at the growing markets like traditionally traditionally we've seen

like southeast Asia as the number one but I think Mina is the fastest growing in terms of uh amount of players and there's traditionally been seen also as a lot of tier three countries but there's plenty of like tier one when you look at the modelization when you start putting in the UAE the qars the uh the Saudi arabas and so forth I mean Israel is also in Mina so those are all high average revenue for paying user numbers that that we're seeing in those markets so for sure and yeah even like you mentioned you know for example in the Middle East we saw um you know Ina purchase Revenue climed 18% so you know we're talking 4% globally 18% in the Middle East um even like Latin America was up 133% year-over-year so some of these smaller markets you know still relatively low even you know if they monetize quite well on a per user basis like in the Middle East but I do think you know those will just continue to grow so will be areas that become increasingly important even if as of right now you know if we're you know us you know of the 2.8 billion gained

globally last year us accounted for two billion of that so still by far the largest market or you know Europe accounted for another 1.5 billion of course now you're seeing that that adds up to more than the total because that's offset by the billion dollar decline in Asia but um yeah we're kind of getting a good sense globally of where things are trending and um yeah there are going to be opportunities outside of you know the US and Europe and some of these these core markets as well so think globally at locally focus on key markets and some of these key markets might be emerging so make sure to look at the data as well and don't live in the path of like it's only Japan and Korea that makes sense and it's only you know whatever the uh the European key countries the the Germany the UK the uh the France but it's there's there's a lot of growth Pockets if you start breaking down the data and and if you invest into local marketing a little bit of ization again not changing the game per se but

changing how you Market it there's there's uh there gains to be uh had yeah I think that's a that's like a perfect summary and I think that's what we're going to continue to see and uh and developers being creative with this too um you know trying things that you know might be different than what we've seen historically just because we don't know where things are going to go and there might be some opportunities for for developers that you know are are going to be take some risks and uh be a little bit more creative too yeah it everything this is normal in a mature Market this is what fast moving consumer goods does like you should say you know sell the same Pringles but you approach the marketing a little bit differently in different GEOS and I think we uh we're moving towards that Direction Where We need to put a little bit more effort in order to Market our billion dollar franchises final thing that I wanted to ask is about the audience so gen Z continues to really embrace the user generated content platforms so we got the discords the Instagrams the Tik toks the snaps how can they game developers other than Roblox tap into this behavior

and these preferences and and overall is there anything that can be done to stop the Unstoppable Roblox capturing from every single ugc player and Roblox in Minecraft let put it that way yeah yeah no it's an interesting question because yeah when you were asking that I was like the first thing of course came to my mind was Roblox and in mcraft because yeah I mean Roblox is uh you know it's the biggest game in the world by monthly active users and of course is also so it's the top um you know we show that for uh players aged 18 to 24 is by far the top game as well I believe uh like 22% of the US uh us users mo mobile users play Roblox which is pretty wild it's just a huge number it ranks up there with a lot of the top non- games so yeah just hugely popular I mean it's you know when you talk it's a good question because it's like it's hard as you can see with those games like it's hard to do that right same thing with some of the top social media companies yeah I mean I think one thing we might be seeing and again this is is

probably easier said than done but just the idea of working with social media is also part of your strategy so for example again you know we mentioned earlier on with last war like the fact that those games can be integrated into Tik toks or like you can see videos on Tik Tok or Instagram of people you know like whatever conversations going on in the background and people are playing Minecraft in like the back you get like the the just different kind of simp simp Le game plays that you can see in the background and then also just the you know viral moments the verality of streamers and things like that too so even for gaming that don't use user generated content if you can kind of Leverage the popularity of some of these social media sites again a lot easier said than done you can find success so you know example I'm thinking of is um you know there was like a supermarket simulator that was really popular on the web and it drove this huge growth in Supermarket a couple Supermarket games on mobile so just because it went V on you know social media um you know even outside of mobile gaming there's you

know my Supermarket Simulator 3D got more than 80 million downloads in 2024 off of just some viral growth that happened completely outside of you know its own environment um so I think that's you know again creating user generated generated content is hard unless if you do it like the all-in method kind of like Roblox and Minecraft do so we may see more competitors in that space as well kind of fighting for that attention but I do think we'll also see um maybe game developers looking keeping track of what trends are popular on social media because if you can find what younger users are interested in whether it's Supermarket simulators or whatever else it is that might be able to give you some insights into um what gaming Trends might also appeal to that same audience so again I think more of a general strategy but it is something that I would continue to monitor I think um moving forward got it well think I asked all my questions I have only one and that is looking at the report Sor Tower stateof

the market link below what are some of the things that you would like the readers to focus on because there's you know as I said like I think 80 something Pages like which ones are are kind of key takeaways that people should be thinking about yeah so I may throw in some non-gaming ones as well because that's a lot of my focus too um a business podcast of course um so and yes please if you go to state of mobile 2025. one word just stateof mobile 2025 you can find the report and download it there and follow along any of these trends for yourself honestly a lot a lot probably more engaging to look at all the charts than to just hear hear me talk about them but um yeah some of the trends you know I mentioned digital fatigue earlier that's going to be one that I think is really interesting to monitor just because for me it's entirely new to see time span actually decline another that's interesting on non-gaming side and but I think can kind of connect cross over to gaming and what we're seeing is coming out of the pandemic we are seeing um on non-gaming

where we're seeing some of the most success is apps that are able to connect users into the real world rather than just like the you know the digital world so rather than just like you know dating apps being the focus we're seeing health and fitness apps that you know have you connect with your local running club and actually go out and runs with people meterse apps anti meterse shops kind of honestly yeah yeah or um you know like instead of having f food delivery we're having apps like um actual like fast food apps where you go order online and pick up your food and it improves that process or grocery store apps where you can pull up coupons and things like that um so where you're actually again going physically in person so where's where uh yeah places where app developers are integrating like the mobile app into the actual in-person experience is kind of where we're seeing the most grow right now you know maybe partially because that got installed during the pandemic um but I do think that's that was another Trend that was particularly interesting me to me too so digital

fatigue and antie I'm just going to call it it's easier to understand wait so anything that has a connection to the physical elements that will be you know yeah and of course you know these are General Trends so like there are a lot of a lot of apps that are still you know digital focused I'd say metaverse apps are still doing really well again we are seeing Revenue climb across the board but that was one something that jumped out to me like a common theme across like some of the fastest growing it's is again a lot of that that connects you to in person or even just connecting you across devices as well uh and then um in by digital fatigue I'm fishing let's say I'm uh I'm a I'm a game developer a game API is not looking that hard we need to do something fast hey I have an idea let's make an app that Taps into digital fatigue that is seeing as a trend in sensored Tower report and I'm going to make an app that gamifies people using less time on their

social media apps would that be it I think possibly I mean it's funny because like now you're you're I you'd have to you'd have to come up with the right strategy for it but uh I'm thinking like thinking of um for example you have like these walking reward apps so sweatcoin and there's a couple cash um so you know again not really a game but it does incentivize you to get out and walk and things like that and get out into the real world and those apps are actually also seen in Resurgence so not exactly what you're talking about but I think if there's a way to somehow you know I mean um I haven't you know looked that deeply into Pokemon Go's performance and things like that but you know and that's of course a game that incentivizes you to get out into the real world there might be opportunities there if you are creative enough to be able to find a good way to actually connect those things that's awesome I'm gonna make a that's that's the app I want to make there's going to be a streak of how long you have been not watching YouTube mental health points every day and then

you'll pay you'll pay for streak repair in that too you'll pay purch to your streak for and there's going to be a social group like an AA that basically you know GNA get give each other encouragement I've been 14 days off Tik Tok and it's really hard my friends are talk it's like you can do it I know it's hard every day the new start honestly I think I think you're on to something here people people are focusing on their times spent in apps right they're already people are already Monet or monitoring that why not try to tap into that and give them extra incentives you excellent then you can share your screen of like really low screen time of like I've spent 15 minutes last week on Instagram you can Flex it and it posts automatically on Instagram without you going for Instagram exactly it's like people yeah it's like people bragging about their workouts on stra it's exactly it's the same thing yeah I think it works okay you're on to something well thank you so thank you everybody for listening Jonathan you're uh a market Guru and even in this

conversation there came up a startup idea for an app excellent can't promise it every time but I mean again you're you're the creative genius here yeah so somebody if you execute give Jonathan some shares too because you heard it here on this podcast if you build an app on where you game ify your limited interaction with social media that's it yeah thank you for having me thank you thank you Jonathan for joining thank you everybody for listening hope this is super useful there's a link again in the description below where you can get the full report and Jonathan will be back when the state of gaming will drop sometime soon right yes uh it should be in the next I believe a month or two so uh should be coming pretty soon and look forward to diving even deeper into gaming then stay tuned and meanwhile ship apps ship games we'll catch you later byebye everybody you did it you made it to the

end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if You' subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice those stars and likes while a small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com SL SL and appli to join Jo the games industry best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fun content creators thanks for listening [Music]