Mobile gaming revenue now makes more than the global box office

Mobile gaming is now a bigger cash cow than movie theaters, according to data from SuperData Research and Unity Technologies. The global mobile gaming market made $40.6bn in revenue in 2016 after a year of 18 percent annual growth, while the movie box office earned around $38bn over the same period.

The report, titled: “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: The 2016 Mobile Games Market,” looked at gaming on mobile, mobile VR and VR to gather data on what games people were playing, how they were playing them and also look for opportunities for future growth in the sector. Mobile gamers love puzzle games the most, with 58% of mobile gamers playing them, followed by 40% who play action games and 26% who play simulation games.

While Android gamers are a significant majority at 78% of the global market, iOS gamers in the US spend more. In China, Android players spend eight times more than iOS players. As Americans spend more time playing mobile games than watching Netflix, Hulu or Youtube, mobile games present a great advertising opportunity to companies.

One country that’s seeing huge increases in gaming activity is Indonesia, which increased its number of app installs by 192% in 2016. Asia as a region is far and away the most lucrative mobile gaming market, raking in $24.8bn in mobile gaming revenue compared to the North American region, which only made $6.9bn.

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