Global app spending surpassed $65 billion in H1 2022

Global consumer spending in mobile apps across Play Store and App Store grew 1% Y/Y and surpassed $65 billion in the first half of 2022. While Apple’s consumer spending hit $43.7 billion with a 5.6% growth from $41.4 billion generated in H1 2021, Google’s revenue declined 7.4% from $23 billion to $21.3 billion, according to Sensor Tower. 

Across both Apple and Google’s marketplaces, TikTok continued to be the highest earning non-game app generating a total of $1.7 billion from user spending which grew 85% from $920.7 million it generated in the first half of the last year. Meanwhile, the popular short video app surpassed $5.5 billion in total lifetime revenue. 

TikTok was followed by YouTube and Google One with $693.6M and $614M respectively. The list continues with Tinder and Disney+.

Global app adoption slowed down in H1 2022

Although app spending kept rising in the first half of 2022, this wasn’t the case for global app downloads which dropped 1.5% from last year’s 72.3 billion to 71.2 billion in H1 2022. While App Store downloads hit 15.9 billion, Google Play apps generated 55.3 billion downloads, according to Sensor Tower. 

Similarly, TikTok was the most downloaded app in H1 generating nearly 313.2 million global downloads, followed by Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, Messenger, CapCut, Shopee and Spotify respectively. 

Player spending in mobile games hit $41.2 billion in 1H22

Global consumer spending in mobile games decreased 6.6% from last year’s $44.1B to $41.2B in H1 2022. iOS users spent nearly $25.6 billion while Android users spent $15.6 billion, both down 0.8% and 14.8% respectively compared to last year’s figures. 

Tencent’s Honor of Kings became the top grossing mobile game in H1, generating $1.4 billion from player spending. It was followed by PUBG Mobile with $1.1 billion, Genshin Impact with $986.2 million, Candy Crush Saga with $593.5 million and Roblox with $576.5 million.

In the meantime, global mobile game downloads showed a slight upward trend rising 0.4% from last year’s 28 billion to 28.1 billion in the first half of this year. While Google Play games saw 23.9 billion downloads, App Store games generated 4.2 billion downloads. 

Subway Surfers, the hit title from SYBO which was recently acquired by Miniclip, topped the list with 148.7 million installs, followed by Garena Free Fire and Ludo King which hit 147.2 million and 87.7 million downloads respectively.