In February 2021, PUBG Mobile from Tencent's TiMi Studios was the top grossing mobile game worldwide with $250 million in player spending, a 16.2% increase from February 2020. Approximately 66.5% of its revenue came from China and its localized version, Game For Peace, followed by 7.4% from the US and 3% from Saudi Arabia. Honor of Kings, also from Tencent, ranked second with $218.5 million, up 57.2% year-over-year, with 95.6% from China and 1.6% from Thailand.
Genshin Impact from miHoYo was third, followed by Pokémon GO from Niantic, which earned $124.2 million, an increase of about 95% YoY, boosted by the ticketed Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto event on February 20 that generated $10.6 million in a single day. Roblox from Roblox Corporation came fifth with $101.6 million, up 84.8% YoY, accumulating $2.5 billion in lifetime player spending. These rankings are based on Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence data for the App Store and Google Play worldwide from February 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021, excluding third-party Android stores.
The article also mentions a link to compare with January 2021 rankings.
Attribution identifies user sources via third-party SDKs. Deep linking uses that data to route users to specific app content. Deterministic matching offers 100% accuracy; probabilistic uses statistics. Key mechanisms include URI schemes, Universal Links, and App Links.
In 2020, mobile app consumer spending hit $111B globally, up 30.2% YoY. Games drove 71.7% of revenue. First-time installs reached 143B, up 23.7%. TikTok and Zoom saw huge growth among non-game apps.
Mobile ad fraud wastes billions yearly. Categories: attribution hijacking (real users, fake clicks) and fake installs (bots, device farms). Fraudsters evolve, exploiting industry complexities. Key to combat: education, secure SDKs, post-attribution detection.
Only 2% of App Store games revenue comes from publishers earning under $1M. Apple's new 85/15 split for small developers benefits few, while top earners (2.7% of publishers) account for 97.4% of revenue.
In the U.S., the top 100 mobile games accounted for 64.4% of player spending in 2020, down from 2017 but revenue grew 35% YoY to $14.4B due to COVID-19. Lower tiers saw faster growth, increasing their share. Globally, top 100 games held 53.5% of spending, up slightly from 2019 but down from 2017. Top 10 worldwide grew 34% to $13.7B, with 17.2% share. The market is expanding for all tiers, especially outside the top 100 in the U.S.
Honor of Kings earned $258M, up 58% YoY. PUBG Mobile $177M, Genshin Impact $163.5M, Pokémon GO $159.3M, Roblox $138.7M in December 2020.
Genshin Impact surpassed $1 billion in player spending in under six months on mobile, making it the fastest title to reach this milestone.
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