Dipali Banka from exchange4media says, according to InMobi’s Audience Insights Mobile Gaming, Asia Pacific, report, 89 per cent of India’s gamers are on mobile with a 20.3% growth year on year.
India has always been a gaming hub both for mobile gaming and pc or console gaming, India is home to one out of ten of the world’s gamers and these numbers tend to keep rising over the years. India’s mobile gaming market is set to become one of the top mobile gaming markets in APAC, says InMobi’s Audience Insights Mobile Gaming, Asia Pacific report.
According to the report from InMobi, with mobile devices proving to be a low barrier for entry to gaming for most gamers, 89% of India’s gamers are on mobile with a 20.3% growth year on year.
Total Gaming App usage growth was 65% over the pre-Covid period with Arcade and Casual games recording 368% and 198% growth respectively. Gaming app usage surged across Metros, tier 1,2 and 3 cities in India. There was a minimum 80% growth across India during April and May 2020, states the report.
While looking at the type of games, the report points out that non-strategy led games such as Word and Arcade games have witnessed increasing popularity while commanding a larger share of spends. “This phenomenon can be attributed to their high accessibility and the ability of an average user to be able to plug and play these games,” says the report.
Growth in spends on Gaming Apps increased by 331% for casual games, followed by 158% for Arcade games and 98% for Word games, this was followed by Racing games at 73%.
In an interesting observation, the report brings out that gaming is not only popular among the Gen Z, but is equally popular among those in the age group of 45 to 54. 39% of all gamers are in the 45+ age category while 36.4% of them are aged 18-24 followed by 19.8% of 25-44 years age group.
The ratio of 45+female audiences are the same as 18-24 years old, while in case of male gamers, they form a big chunk of 28% while 18-24 years are at 26%.
While looking at the popularity of gaming across different regions in India, the report states that it is most popular in South India with 34%, West India 26% and East India with 8%.
“This is reflective of several factors such as internet connectivity, digital maturity, and behavioral attributes across these regions,” says the report.
Gaming now claims 4.7 billion devices across the world, with smartphones coming in, mobile gaming has seen a huge surge. According to the report, Mobile Gaming will account for over 48% of overall revenues in beating both console and PC gaming. There are about 2.6 billion mobile games across the world.
InMobi’s Audience Insights Mobile Gaming, Asia Pacific report analyzed the mobile gaming data from January 2020 to April 2020 and highlights the user behavior of gaming personas, advertiser spends and the performance of different ad formats in the gaming category. The report analyses three key regions- Australia, Indonesia and India.
Overall, gaming culture in India is on the rise and has paved way to many mainstream Indian gamers and these numbers will be rising year after year.