Mobile Gaming Revenues Jump 18% to Over $40 Billion

The mobile gaming market has hit another milestone in 2016, growing to record heights of $40 billion. The growth represents a rise of 18 percent in a year and is now worth almost half of the world’s digital gaming market, according to SuperData Research and Unity Technologies.

Obviously, this means that people now are playing more games than ever before, and once again it is the developing markets experiencing the biggest boom.

The time spent on gaming rose by 12 percent on iOS, by far the preferred platform for mobile gaming, and 9 percent on Android (which is still the larger market with 78 percent of gamers). The average time spent gaming now stands at around 30 minutes each.

The Asian market generated 62 percent of the combined revenue, earning developers $24.8 billion, followed by North America ($6.9 billion) and Europe ($5.7 billion).

The more popular genres included puzzle, action and simulation-based games. The report also earmarks VR as a potent platform, with revenue of $1.8 billion throughout the year on 6.3 million units sold. The lion’s share within that came from Samsung’s Gear VR, which made its mark on the back of a much lower price-point compared to offerings from HTC, Oculus and even Sony.

Games are also a much faster-growing and engaging medium than say TV shows or movies, which are consumed by people on-average of 5 days a week, compared to 6 for games. With such figures, it is safe to say there’s still room to grow for mobile gaming in the future.

Via Business Wire