The gaming industry has witnessed unprecedented growth in recent years.
Mobile gaming statistics show that the industry generated total revenue of $180.3 billion by the end of 2021, up +1.4% over last year.
The share of the mobile gaming industry is a whopping 52% which accounts for $93.2 billion.
The sheer number of new gamers has risen to 3 billion, +5.3% more than the previous year. 55% of these new players are based in the Asia-Pacific region.
The factors that add to the numbers are plenty.
Increased number of casual and pro gamers, increased viewership due to the increase in esports fandom, audience growth in live streaming of different genres, and much more.
Key Mobile Gaming Statistics 2025
- 21% of Android and 25% of iOS apps downloaded are games.
- Games account for 43% of all smartphone users.
- 62% of people install a game on their phone within a week of owning it.
- 78% of gamers are Android users.
- The number of active mobile gamers worldwide is over 2.2 billion.
- 57.9% of the games played are puzzle games.
- More women spend money on in-game content than men.
- The mobile games’ revenue was expected to hit $76.7 billion by the end of 2020.
- Asia is the biggest gaming marketplace in the world.
- PUBG mobile is the top mobile game worldwide in terms of revenue.
- About 53% of internet users between the age of 45-54 years play mobile games.
- Only 37% of mobile gamers are men.
- Only 8% of mobile gamers are teenagers.
Mobile Gaming Demographics in 2025
Who Plays These Games?
With office work shifting to home and schooling of the children homebound, the gaming industry has flourished even more in these years of pandemics.
The ease of access to advanced gaming devices has also added to this factor.
With time, smartphones have evolved in their gaming capability, making gaming easy and on the go.
But who does this revolution in the gaming industry affect the most? We shall see this in the mobile gaming demographics below.
1. Mobile Gamers by Age
With the ease of access extended to smartphones that are not exclusively available to children, the gamer demographics have shifted.
There has been an increasing number of older gamers who play several times a day.
According to AdColony’s survey, about 50% of players between the ages of 18 to 54 consider themselves committed gamers.
36% of the surveyed people, between 65 to 74, reportedly play once to several times a day.
Even though a large chunk of people, 62% of the surveyed people between 18 to 24, reported to be committed gamers, other age groups are also fairly involved.
Above 50% of people, up to the age of 55 years, reported themselves as committed gamers.
2. Mobile Gamers by Gender
The misconception that mobile gaming is a man dominated industry is not true.
The percentage of female to male gamer ratio of 49% to 51% is almost balanced.
3. Mobile Gamers by Region
The Asia Pacific has been at the tip of the explosion of smartphones. India is one of the globally fastest-growing smartphone markets.
According to Google, more than 60% of Indian online players are in the 18-24 age group.
New users are added to online games every day, leading to an increase in the download of game applications.
According to some estimates, there are now over 300 million online gaming players in India, largely due to the easy access to gaming payment options and the ease of availability of smartphones. The user base is expected to double by 2022. Much of it is from rural parts where mobile gaming is still in the process of gaining popularity.
The recent global level esports events have witnessed participation in the Indian gaming sphere.
Thus, with the greatest number of gamers, Asia leads the world’s charts of mobile gamer distribution. Around 1293.6 million, roughly 1.3 billion gamers from the Asian continent alone.
Europe has around 551.7 million, Latin America has around 309.2, North America has around 207.7 million, MENA region has around 145.8 million, Sub Sahara Africa has around 126.2 million, and Oceania around 25.3 million mobile gamers.
Gaming Frequency: How Long Does a Person Spend on Gaming?
Studies have shown that an average gaming session for women lasts 25% longer than for men.
Committed gamers are extremely active compared to regular and occasional gamers, with a playtime of once to several times per day.
Occasional gamers play once to several times a month. In India alone, 80% of gamers play once a day, 11% play at least once a week.
Only lesser than 9% play once a month or less. According to a study, US adults spent an average of 3 hours, 35 minutes per day, on mobile devices in 2018, with an annual increase of more than 11 minutes.
11% of this statistic is spent on gaming, which implies around 23 minutes of gaming every day, which is 2.68 hours every week, 5.85 days every year, and finally around 1.3 years of an average person’s life, keeping the average lifetime at 80 years.
Mobile Gaming Industry Revenue Statistics: How Is Revenue Generated and How Much Is It?
The mobile gaming industry has been on a track of rising market share for quite some years now, with each year adding to the previous statistics.
The mobile gaming market set at $93 billion as of 2021 is already projected to make $116.4 billion by the end of 2025.
This revenue constitutes 52% of the total gaming market share, out of which 45% is attributable to smartphones and 7% to tablets.
This has been a wild growth outcome compared to console, boxed/downloaded, and PC games. PC and console take 20% and 28% of the market share, respectively.
Apart from in-game purchases, which are the basic method of generating revenue for a lot of games, some ways benefit not only the game development companies but also the gamers:
In esports, where gaming is taken to a competitive level, fans have increased.
Now, around 465.1 million people watch esports, of which 235.5 million are occasional viewers (watch less than once a month).
Statistics depicted that the remaining 229.6 million are esports enthusiasts (once a month or more).
Many such enthusiasts have been waiting eagerly to return physical esports events after the market moving to digital-only was announced during the pandemic.
The esports revenue has risen to $1.084 billion, with around $641 million from sponsorships alone.
In 2021, the count of people watching live-streamed gaming content had gone to 747 million, increasing +12.7% over 2020.
One of the main takeaways from our 2021 live-streaming data and Consumer Insights is that many people who started watching streams during the early pandemic have stuck around.
In simple terms, engagement has gone through the roof, and there is more competition in streaming than ever before, creating a better ecosystem for both the viewers and the streamers.
This helped the biggest platforms enjoy massive viewership boosted in 2021. The sheer number of watch hours generated from platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook is daunting.
In terms of hours watched, Twitch remains the clear market leader in the West, and it continues to innovate beyond games.
Top-Grossing Mobile Games: Which Games Are Played the Most?
Several games have entered the billionaire club, out of which some remarkable names of 2021 will be discussed here.
Before going into the top-grossing games, mention the other billionaire club games.
1. Garena Free Fire
A first-person shooter game where the character enters a virtual world of action and drama.
It stands as a battle royale game that can be played on low specs android phones, which has made it one of the most popular mobile games.
Data showed that it grossed $1.1 billion in revenue in 2021.
2. Candy Crush Saga
Released on Facebook in April 2012, this puzzle game has only seen rise throughout the journey. Players have to solve candy puzzles and level up to the highest and toughest levels in the game.
The game has an enormous appeal for people from all walks of life and age groups. 46% of the players are male, and 54% are women.
The game was primarily targeted at women aged 25 – 45.
However, it has been recognized that it is easy to find retired people, homemakers, and convalescents among us.
Women enjoy it the most for its aesthetics and relaxed vibe (men are said to be extra competitive in video games), and players, in general, appreciate how easy it is to pick up.
According to statistics, it grossed $1.2 billion in revenue in 2021.
3. Pokémon GO
This game ventured into augmented reality, where players discover and capture Pokémon in real-life places.
The game augments the in-game assets to real life and places them on various locations across the map using the smartphone’s GPS.
Although its peak has already passed, the game is still amassing some really amazing numbers.
Mobile games statistics reflected that it grossed $1.2 billion in revenue in 2021.
4. Coin Master
The Israeli company Moon Active is a casual free-to-play game that borrows its core mechanics from gambling.
The game is single-player but has multiplayer modes too.
The game grossed $1.4 billion in revenue in 2021.
5. Roblox
Launched in 2006 as a gaming platform focused on user-created games, Roblox saw limited traction at first. Its popularity skyrocketed over the last few years, especially the years of pandemics.
Roblox hit 202 million monthly active users in April 2021. There are 9.5 million developers on Roblox. Community developers made over $328 million on Roblox.
Mobile gaming industry statistics showed that 67% of users are under 16.
With tremendous growth and traction, Roblox made $1.3 billion in revenue in 2021.
6. Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact (see: Genshin VPN) is an action role play game developed by Chinese developer miHoYo exploded when it was first released in 2020.
The game features an anime-style open-world environment and an action-based battle system.
It generated $1.8 billion in revenue in 2021, as shown from mobile game statistics.
7. Honor of Kings
Released in 2015, Honor of Kings is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game published by Tencent Games and is inspired by League of Legends.
The game has been a huge success.
Statistics showed that the game had grossed $2.8 billion in revenue in 2021.
8. PUBG Mobile
Finally, the game spawned an entire industry of battle royale games and popularized the first-person shooting genre in mobile phones.
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) launched in December 2017 (see: VPN for PUBG), and then it was released on Xbox and PlayStation in early 2018.
The game’s success attracted competitors who tried to follow the same path and even tried to make games with features directly copied from the game.
Although PUBG had exploded in popularity worldwide, it struggled to compete in the United States because Fortnite (see: VPN for Fortnite) overshadowed it.
Then with its launch on Android and iOS in 2018, PUBG surpassed Fortnite in downloads through its large userbase in China and India.
Affiliations with Tencent helped the game pass through the Chinese censorship, but it also was the reason for PUBG getting banned in India.
PUBG overcame the Indian ban by issuing an Indian version of the game, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), in compliance with Indian law. Even after being banned itself, people use a VPN for BGMI to get around it.
Overcoming all the hurdles, this battle royale game has managed to skyrocket in fame and fan base, making it the highest-grossing game of the year 2021 and putting it on a path to further glory.
Mobile game revenue statistics showed that PUBG grossed $2.8 billion in revenue in the year 2021.
FAQs
How Many Mobile Gamers are There in 2025?
There are over 2.2 billion active mobile gamers worldwide.
In Conclusion
The mobile game industry has exploded in mass and volume in recent years, and the explosion is only projected to expand further.
With the addition of the latest technology into games and further development of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, the industry is also looking at some massive upscales in the future years.
By 2024, the global games market is projected to generate revenues of $218.8 billion, of which $116.4 billion is attributed to the mobile gaming industry alone.
This implies that the esports engagement, stream viewership, and gamer influencer industry are only looking at a projected rise.
These mobile gaming statistics shows that the gaming industry a fertile field for a lot of advertisement and investment.
