In numbers: How India is killing it in the global mobile gaming market

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Jumping two spots up from 2015, India became the fifth biggest gaming market globally in 2016, thanks to a surge in sales of low-cost but powerful smartphones. According to App Annie, an analytics firm that tracks data on mobile apps, the total game revenue in India – from local and foreign publishers – is estimated to reach as high as US$1.1 billion by 2020.

Globally in 2016, games accounted for over 80 percent of total amount spent by users on apps worldwide – on the iOS App Store and Google Play.

The share of downloads for gaming apps was roughly 35 percent of total worldwide downloads. Mobile gaming has become so popular that it has dismantled PCs and Macs as preferred gaming tools. Spending on mobile games is almost 25 percent higher than that on computers.

Of the total spending on gaming apps, 60 percent came from the Asia-Pacific region. Its share of game spending on iOS App Store and Google Play increased mostly due to growth in China on iOS, and in Japan on both app stores.

The Indian gaming market is also rapidly growing. Between Q2 2014 and Q2 2016, game downloads in India more than doubled, with Google Play generating 13 times more downloads compared to iOS. The overall amount of time Indian users spend on mobile games grew sharply in 2016.