India's mobile gaming industry has reported a significant surge in popularity, surpassing even leading markets like the US and Brazil. According to the latest report by Apptica, the mobile gaming market in India witnessed around 4.32 billion game downloads in 2023, which makes up 15.3% of the global total. This is a substantial 0.9% increase compared to the same period in 2022.
Notably, Brazil secured the second spot with 2.99 billion downloads (10.59%), and the US followed closely with 2.57 billion downloads (9.08%). Surprisingly, China, known for being the world's largest mobile-first gaming market, ranked sixth in total game downloads with 1.3 billion, only representing 4.59% of the overall downloads. These figures indicate India's growing influence and significant presence in the mobile gaming industry, suggesting a likely further ascension in the market.
Despite the impressive number of downloads, the revenue numbers are a different story. India did not even rank among the top 15 markets in revenue generation from gaming apps. The US led the revenue chart with $5.71 billion, securing a market share of 26.61%, which increased from 22.61% during the same period in 2022. Japan and China followed with $4.17 billion (19.43%) and $3.32 billion (15.05%), respectively.
In H1 2023, most game genres saw a decrease in downloads compared to the same period in the previous year. Casual games topped the list with 4.15 billion downloads, albeit slightly lower than the 4.25 billion in the first six months of 2022. Action genre games came second, but they saw a decline in market share, dropping from 4.29 billion to 3.9 billion downloads. Simulation games secured the third spot with 3.27 billion downloads.
On the platform front, Google Play proved to be the preferred platform for game downloads, accounting for a significant 88.63% of the market. The App Store, on the other hand, managed to claim just 11.37%. However, in terms of revenue, the App Store took the lead, claiming 56.26%, while Google Play accounted for 43.74%. This suggests that although the iOS and Android platforms are close in terms of revenue, iOS users tend to spend more on average than Android users.