NPD’s mobile and tablet gaming report 2020 examines the current state of the US and Canadian mobile gaming market, including the gaming habits of current players (ages 2+), market performance trends, and notable happenings of the past year. This analysis is broken into three sections:

  1. Market Summary
  2. Mobile Gamer Profiles
  3. Mobile Genre Profiles

The first section provides an overarching view of the US mobile games market in terms of the number of active gamers (and devices used) and revenue performance and explores key stories/trends over the past year. The second section focuses on active mobile gamers (ages 2+) and profiles their habits, preferences, and motivations. Summaries include both total market views and profiles by the demographic of the audience. The third section breaks down the mobile gaming market by genre and subgenre, providing a view of the relative performance of different types of mobile games, as well as profiles of the players who are playing them. Note: this is the free version of the report and so only includes highlights from each section.

The headlines from the mobile and tablet gaming report 2020 (for the US and Canada) include:

  • There are 214.1m active players, with the rate of growth slowing due to few newer users entering the market (and already saturated device adoption)
  • 89% play on smartphones (43% solely use this device) and 57% on tablets (11% solely on this device). 46% play on both a smartphone and tablet
  • $11.82bn in annual games revenue is generated, 24% higher than the previous year
  • 60% of Americans/Canadians play mobile games and gaming continues to be one of the most common uses for a smartphone
  • Adults aged 25-44 are the highest average annual gaming spenders, amounting to $31 per year. They are followed by adults 45+ ($23), children aged 2-12 ($19) and teens and young adults ($17)
  • Adults aged 25-44 makeup 30% of the gaming audience and spend an average of 6 hours a week playing, adults aged 45+ contribute 28% of the audience and play for 5 hours a week, teens and young adults (13-24 years old) are 24% of the audience and spend 6 hours a week playing and the remainder are children aged 2-12 who also spend 6 hours a week playing
  • Puzzle games contribute to 21% of the audience spend on gaming, followed by skill and chance games at 20%. Sports games only contribute 3% and driving/racing just 1%
  • Candy Crush Saga is the highest-grossing game for the second year running, followed by Pokemon Go. Roblox Mobile rose to third place followed by Clash of Clans and Fortnite complete the top 5 games

Click here to download the mobile and tablet gaming report 2020 (US and Canada).

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