Mobile Gaming Market Grew in 2024, With Germany Ranking Fifth Worldwide

Mobile gaming grew again in 2024, with mobile gamers spending $82 billion on in-app purchases worldwide. Germany ranked fifth in the world in terms of spending. These are the findings of the "State of Gaming Report 2025" by market research firm Sensor Tower.

Global in-app purchase (IAP) revenues in the mobile games market grew to $82 billion in 2024, an increase of four percentage points from the previous year. - according to the "State of Gaming Report 2025" by Sensor Tower. The US remains the largest market in terms of consumer spending in 2024, with in-app revenues of nearly $24 billion (+8%). Germany ranked fifth in 2024 with spending of $2.6 billion (2023: $2.4 billion), behind China (iOS only), Japan and South Korea. While Asia saw a 3% decline in IAP revenues, Latin America (+13%) and the Middle East (+18%) proved to be growing gaming markets. Brazil in particular cemented its status as an important soft launch hub for global publishers.

The increase in time spent was even greater. Players spent 3.5 trillion hours playing mobile games, an increase of eight percentage points year-on-year. Shooters and simulations saw an increase in time spent, while casual puzzle games such as Royal Match dominated IAP revenues in Western markets. The total number of game sessions increased by 12%. While new app downloads fell to 49 billion (-7% year-on-year), the report shows that publishers are increasingly focusing on player retention and monetisation. Games that use a hybrid monetisation strategy, generating revenue from both in-app purchases and advertising, saw a 37% year-on-year increase in in-app revenue.

'The mobile gaming ecosystem has matured and developers are now focusing more on retention, engagement and monetisation,' said Oliver Yeh, CEO and co-founder of Sensor Tower. With the rising cost of user acquisition, studios have adopted strategies such as live ops and hybrid monetisation to maximise long-term revenue.

Speaking of game types, casual games, including Candy Crush Saga, Pokémon GO and Monopoly Go, saw almost 16.7% fewer downloads (16.7 million in total) than last year, while IAP revenue in the segment grew by 6.4% ($32.4 billion). A similar trend was seen in the hyper-casual segment. The number of downloads fell by 2% to 20.1 billion, but revenues rose sharply by 73.6% to $316 million. Examples of these "low-cost games with simple and repetitive game mechanics" include Block Blast, Mini Games: Calm & Chill and My Superstore Simulator. The fastest growing market is 'exclusive access' games, which are available to members of an external subscription service such as Netflix. In this area, downloads grew by 20% to 97 million and IAP revenue by 161% to 2.6 million, which is comparatively small compared to the other categories. The biggest area, however, is mid-core games such as Call of Duty: Mobile, Clash of Clans and Honor of Kings - with 5.9 billion downloads and $45.9 billion in revenue, but little change from last year. Hybrid casual games, which combine the gameplay of hypercasual games with the long-term progression of mid-core games, were downloaded 6.5 billion times (+3.4%) and generated $3.1 billion (+37%).

Subway Surfers (6.78%)
My Superstore Simulator (5.96%)
My Perfect Hotel (3.58%)
Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles (3.40%)
Toca Life: World (3.36%)

Royal Match (14.72%)
Last War: Survival Game (13.95%)
Coin Master (8.74%)
Township (5.77%)
Raid: Shadow Legends (4.64%)

Royal Match (7.76%)
Brawl Stars (7.55%)
Roblox (7.12%)
Last War: Survival Game (4.65%)
Free Fire (3.60%)

Dungeon & Fighter, Whiteout Survival, Last War and Brawl Stars each surpassed $1 billion in consumer spending in 2024.

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