July 23, 2014, Casual Connect Conference, San Francisco—Bertrand Schmitt from App Annie presented some trends and drivers for the casual gaming industry. Although the industry is growing, it is fairly fragmented and volatile. Monthly statistics for the gaming industry are available from http://www.appannie.com/indexes/all-stores/rank/overall/ The page allows for data analysis by publisher, revenue, country, and game type.
In general, iOS is still seeing good growth and is monetizing over 2 times better than Google Play. The number of downloads is a seasonal number and also reflects anticipation of new hardware. Currently about 40 percent of all downloads, while over 80 percent of revenue are from games. In app purchases are very big in games, compared to non-game purchase which are only one fifth of the gaming revenues.
Google has more games than iOS, but iOS makes more money. Google Play has grown 140 percent in the past year. The stats in the web page indicate the US is the top market for the various apps by downloads, while Japan is tops for revenue. The growth and country rankings show that it is possible to exploit areas. gaming traditions will change as aggregated small populations may exceed the big countries. The Apple-Google divide is also very country dependent, with lots of growth for Google in emerging markets. The advent of low-cost smart phones and small tablets is the biggest drive for this trend.
Therefore, it is wise to simultaneously launch on iOS and Android in the US and Japan. China is better to localize on Android and launch on iOS. South Korea seems to prefer Google Play. In most countries, iOS is larger than Android, but this depends upon the local economies.
The most popular game types for iOS are action, arcade, puzzle, family, and simulations. Google has more categories with the top 5 being casual, arcade, action, puzzle, and racing. There is lots of movement in the markets, which are very dynamic. Revenue for iOS publishers is relatively stable, while Google is growing with steady incomes for the publishers.
When sorting the data for companies, the top gaming companies for downloads and revenue are from Japan. Messaging apps are now being tied in to game portals for discovery functions, since no person is going to go through the thousands of games available.
The move to tie games to movies is growing. The top movie games were "Despicable Me", "Simpsons", "Angry Birds Rio", and "Fast and Furious 6". The big palyers are Gameloft, Disney, Kabam, and Rovio. In all their games, the animation is strong and possibly better than the cinema. Money is also going into TV-based games as more companies move into this space.