Mobile market analyst firm Sensor Tower published Store Intelligence Data Digest that covers the last three months of 2022. We highlighted the main points of the study.
General trend
According to the report, the app market today is not in its best shape. After years of rapid growth it shows clear signs of stagnation. App Store and Google Play users during Q4 generated 35.5 billion combined, which is less than they did a year ago (0.1% decline).
Of course we have to keep in mind the high base effect. Market researchers used to double digits in reports but the show couldn’t go on forever. New times are already here and we have to forget about the previous period of fast growth (even during the Holiday season).
It doesn’t mean that the whole mobile app market is facing stagnation. Some regions proved more resilient than others. For example India, which covers 25% of all installs on Google Play, showed 6.8% growth.
But even such promising regions as Vietnam and Brazil demonstrated a significant year-on-year decline: installs were down by 13% and by 5.3%, respectively.
Game segment was also affected by the trend. App Store gamers generated 1.91 billion downloads (6.9% decline).
Google Play gamers downloaded games 11.69 billion times (in a slight increase of only 0.6%).
Top games by downloads
Old-timers still occupy the overall worldwide chart. The most downloaded games in Q4 were such hits as Subway Surfers, Garena Free Fire and Roblox (success of Subway Surfers looks timeless and unprecedented, the game was released 11 years ago and still holds the number one position by downloads).
But it doesn’t mean that there are no new-comers among the top positions. If we look at the top 20 games by downloads, we will find that half of the list is held by games released in 2022. More than that, if we segment the overall top chart by platform and by country we will discover that new titles (or games that became popular relatively recently) succeed easily on a regional level.
For example, in the United States overall top 3 chart, there are two new releases — guessing game Gas and action game Survivor!.io. The former only made a name on a regional level but it was enough for commercial success. The latter is a talented clone of Vampirior Survivors, one of the brightest indie releases on Steam.
In Europe, in the overall top 3 we can find only one new game — Stumble Guys. Developed by Finnish studio Kitka Games, it is also a mobile successor of a popular PC game, which is Fall Guys.
In Asia, let’s skip the overall chart and look into the App Store top. Here, the top spot is held by Eggy Party, a new NetEase game, which is also interested in the market niche that was discovered by Fall Guys’ developers.
So, it really seems that in the download charts there are still a lot of opportunities for recently released games. Also let’s point out that in general, the proportion of old-timers/new-comers in most regions looks the same.
Stumble Guys was named the most successful game of 2022 (not only in Q4) by downloads
Sensor Tower reported that Stumble Guys is the fastest growing game and growing app of 2022 by downloads. It generated 140,4 million installs around the world in 12 months. Most of them came from Latin America (52.5 million) and Europe (36 million).
In Asia, the game is not as popular as in Latin America or Europe but ironically the majority of downloads was generated in Indonesia (27 million). The game also achieved around 25 million in Brazil. In general, Stumble Guys ranked in the top five games by downloads in most regions around the world.
In terms of revenue, Stumble Guys also boasts some achievements. In the United States alone, it brought it $18.1 million during 2022. Brazil came in second at $7.4 million followed by Italy which yielded $6.2 million.
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You can find the full version of the report here.