Google Play games revenue jumps 50% - App Annie
Games still represent a small slice of overall time spent on mobile, however, for most countries
With Google's I/O event kicking off today, mobile analytics firm App Annie has produced a new report highlighting the major growth of the Android platform over the last year. App Annie has found that games revenue has jumped up 50 percent over last year, with downloads increasing about 30 percent from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015 largely thanks to emerging markets such as Brazil and India. In fact, App Annie noted that Brazil is the fastest growing country in app downloads.
From a revenue standpoint, however, it's the established markets that are continuing to drive bigger numbers. The top 5 countries by revenue were found to be (in order): Japan, United States, South Korea, Germany and the UK. And the top games do appear to be truly global successes, as both Candy Crush and Clash of Clans appear in the top 10 of US, UK, Germany, Japan, South Korea and India.
What's interesting, however, is that in most countries time spent gaming on mobile pales in comparison to other functions, such as general communication or social media uses. As you can see in the chart below, gaming clearly gets more attention from users relative to other functions in countries like Japan and South Korea.
