On June 28th, SensorTower released its "insight into the popular mobile games market in the first half of 2022". Between January and May 2022, revenue from the global mobile game market was $34.8 billion, the first year-on-year decline since the outbreak. In the same period, the growth rate of downloads of mobile games in Europe and the United States slowed down, while Southeast Asia still maintained a good growth trend. RPG and strategic mobile games are still popular categories of user spending, while super leisure mobile games further expand in the scale of users and become the largest growth point in the number of mobile games downloaded today.

The revenue of the global mobile game market will hit a new high in 2021.

Global mobile game players spend about $88.4 billion in 2021, a record high. In terms of mobile devices, iOS users spend 59.1%, slightly more than Android users. Between January and May 2022, domestic purchase revenue from mobile games applications worldwide was $34.8 billion, the first year-on-year decline since the outbreak.

In the first quarter of 2022, the top five markets for global mobile game revenue were the United States, Japan, China (mainland market), South Korea and Taiwan. Among them, market revenue in the US and Japan fell significantly, both by more than 10 per cent; China and South Korea performed more steadily; and quarterly income in Taiwan increased by 7 per cent compared with the same period last year.

In terms of downloads, with the weakening of the global impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the growth rate of mobile game downloads gradually slowed down. The number of downloads in the global mobile game market in 2021 was 55.6 billion, down 1.2 per cent from the same period last year. Among them, Google Play contributed 83.4 per cent of the market share, further increasing compared with 2020.

Although the growth rate of European and American markets has slowed down, Southeast Asia still maintained a good growth trend in the first half of 2022. Affected by the international situation, the number of downloads of mobile games in Russia decreased significantly in April and May.

Globally, India is still the market with the largest number of mobile game downloads, with 2.19 billion downloads in the first quarter of 2022, while growth in Southeast Asia is the brightest. Among them, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines grew by 5 per cent, 21 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.

Moderate and heavy mobile games account for up to 60% of the income.

Moderate and heavy games are still the highest category of mobile game user consumption (IAP) in the world. In the first quarter of 2022, revenue from medium and heavy mobile games exceeded 12.2 billion US dollars, accounting for 60 per cent of the total revenue of the mobile game market. Among them, RPG and strategic categories together contribute 80% of the internal purchase income of medium and heavy mobile games applications.

In casual games, puzzle puzzles and simulations remain strong, both with quarterly revenues of more than $1 billion. In addition, chess and card mobile games have attracted 1.9 billion US dollars worldwide, accounting for 9% of the global income, and still have a considerable market share.

In the first quarter of 2022, leisure mobile games received a total of 8.7 billion downloads, accounting for 79% of the world's total downloads, of which super leisure games were still the highest downloads, reaching 3.5 billion, followed by arcade games and simulations. The global downloads of moderate and severe mobile games are about 1.6 billion, and shooting mobile games have been downloaded a total of 490 million times, making it the category with the highest downloads of moderate and severe mobile games, followed by action and strategy categories. It is worth mentioning that the proportion of downloads of leisure mobile games in the first quarter of 2022 is further higher than that in the same period in 2021, indicating that the proportion of leisure players is still expanding.

4X strategy, simulation, RPG placement, super leisure mobile games have achieved high growth in Asia.

The United States remains the world's largest contributor to 4X strategy mobile game revenue, contributing $650 million in the first quarter of 2022, accounting for 32 per cent of the category's global revenue. Japan and Hong Kong, China rely on the strong performance of the three-country-themed SLG mobile games, the overall income is relatively stable, and Hong Kong, China even achieved 6 per cent year-on-year income growth.

Domestic revenue from simulated mobile games applications in the United States was $540 million in the first quarter of 2022, down 10 per cent from the same period in 2021. It is still the highest-paid market in the category, accounting for 45 per cent of the category's global revenue. Sandboxie mobile games represented by "Roblox" and industrial tycoons / producers represented by "Family Island" are the most popular simulation games in the American market.

With the further penetration of sandboxie and industrial tycoons / production mobile games in Asia and South America, several markets showed step-by-step growth, with South Korea and Brazil achieving 51 per cent and 31 per cent year-on-year growth, respectively.

The top three markets for RPG mobile game revenue were Japan, Chinese mainland and the United States. Revenue from Japan reached $98 million in the first quarter of 2022, accounting for 31 per cent of global revenue from placing RPG mobile games. As a popular market for RPG mobile games, South Korea has also done well in the sub-category of RPG, with a year-on-year growth of 33%.

In the Chinese market of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, mobile game revenue from placing RPG is on the rise. Of this total, quarterly revenue from the Chinese Taiwan market reached US $21 million, up 134 per cent from a year earlier. In addition, among the top 10 markets, Turkish revenue surged to $9 million from $2 million in the first quarter of 2021, thanks to NEXTERS's "Hero Wars".

As the world's largest market for super-leisure mobile games, India received 470 million downloads in the first quarter of 2022, compared with 380 million in the United States, the second largest market. Compared with the first quarter of 2021, it can be seen that the super leisure mobile game market in India and the United States is saturated, showing varying degrees of negative growth.

On the other hand, the super leisure mobile game market in Southeast Asia and Latin America is booming, generally showing a strong growth trend. Especially in the Vietnamese market, the growth rate of quarterly downloads exceeded 40% year-on-year, which shows that the prospect of super casual games in these markets is still considerable.