Hypercasual games have been a dominating force in the mobile gaming market and the current pandemic has further catapulted the genre. Stay-at-home measures have resulted in massive gains in both downloads and user sessions since the beginning of the year. New data reveals that hypercasual installs have doubled between December 2019 and March 2020. Meanwhile, Google was the most downloaded mobile publisher in May according to a new report. Learn more current state of mobile apps and games in this week’s Mobile Monday!
Google Apps Reach 380 Million Installs
Sensor Tower’s data reveals that Google was the most downloaded mobile publisher in May 2020. The tech giant amassed approximately 380 million installs, doubling its total year-over-year. Facebook took the second-highest spot and accumulated 280 million downloads. The social media giant saw a 15% percent increase in comparison to its May 2019 results. Bytedance, the company behind TikTok, claims third place after being fourth and third place on the App Store and Google Play respectively. Game publishers Voodoo and Crazy Labs rounded out the top five taking the fourth and fifth spots respectively.
Crazy Labs’ success is thanks in large part to ASMR Slicing which was the most downloaded mobile game worldwide for May 2020 with just under 37 million installs. PUBG Mobile from Tencent was the second most installed mobile game last month after gaining 34 million installs. This represents huge growth for the title with a 91% year-over-year increase from May 2019. App Store installs have been rising since January 2020 and hit a record 5 million in May. Furthermore, player spending has been increasing and grew to approximately $37 million on iOS last month, breaking another record.
Hypercasual Installs Increase By 103% Between December and March
A report from Adjust and Unity states that hypercasual installs more than doubled with a 103% increase. Installs across the globe rose as users were practicing social distancing at their homes. China had the most significant impact, growing 3.5x in four months (December through March). As downloads rose, sessions increased at high rates as well. Worldwide sessions had already reached over a billion sessions and then further grew 72% in March.
China’s mobile gamers made a huge contribution to the growth in worldwide sessions after a staggering 300% increase in user sessions on hypercasual titles. Other countries in the APAC region saw impressive growth including Korea (152%) and Japan (137%) between December 2019 and March 2020. In the same time period, Germany’s hypercasual sessions rose by 69% while the United States and the United Kingdom also had spikes in user sessions.
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