Sensor Tower and its recent subsidiary data.ai have combined their expertise into the Q1 2024 Mobile Market Overview, a new report exploring consumer spending, app downloads, markets and mobile games through the first quarter of the year.
In this report, the pair highlight a “strong bounce back” for mobile spending, but faltering download numbers on Android.
As evidence for this strong financial start to the year, Q1 broke new ground in regards to revenue, with global consumer spending on mobile apps and games surpassing $35 billion for the first time ever in a single quarter – reaching $35.8 billion.
While this wasn’t quite a record for mobile games alone – generating $20.3 billion in the quarter – they do continue to dominate with roughly two-thirds of consumer spending. Q1 also marks mobile gaming’s first rise above the $20 billion parapet in two years, with quarterly earnings on the rise again every quarter for over a year.
To pay or to play…
Mobile game consumer spending growth “fully returned” on Apple’s App Store in the first quarter, increasing by 6% to $13 billion. On Google Play, however, spending on mobile games fell by $100 million compared to Q1 2023, now down to $7.3 billion. Overall, spending in mobile games between the two has still risen by 3% regardless.
Game installs, meanwhile, fell by almost 7% year-on-year to 12.8 billion. Installs on iOS stayed consistent at two billion in Q1 2023 and in Q1 2024, but on Android they fell from 11.8 billion to 10.8 billion. Combined, this was just over a third of the 34 billion total app downloads for the quarter.
“Much of this decline was driven by continued challenges for casual games in an increasingly competitive market,” the report explains.
It is worth noting that depsite new iOS downloads being a fraction of those on Android – less than a fifth, in fact – iOS users are continuing to spend almost twice as much as their Android counterparts.
And notably, overall app downloads in India have fallen 9% year-on-year, dropping below six billion for the first time in four years. At its highest, quarterly Indian downloads reached 7.8 billion only two quarters ago, meaning a stark fall in the time since to 5.9 billion.
The US, meanwhile, saw a 4% fall to three billion quarterly installs.
While iOS is clearly leading in consumer spending, Tenjin and Clever Ads Solutions have found Android to be the obvious winner in ad revenue…