In short: According to a new report published by Newzoo, there are currently around 3 billion active smartphones around the world. Newzoo breaks these down by region as well, with North America boasting around 278 million active users. Of course, the two larger countries are China and India with 830 million and 456 million respectively. Newzoo also breaks down revenue from games versus non-game apps in the mobile industry. For 2018, there is about $92 billion of revenue coming in from these app stores, and about 76-percent of that comes from games.
Background: These numbers show that active smartphone users have jumped about 500 million in just two years. Back in 2016, the numbers were around 2.5 billion active smartphone users. Back then, India had fewer active smartphone users than North America, coming in with just 227 million, while the US had 258 million active smartphone users. This just shows how quickly India is growing, when it comes to smartphones. China was still the largest, and will continue to be the largest, though its growth is slowing down.
The impact: This report shows that by 2021, there is expected to be about 3.8 billion active smartphone users. About 800 million more users in just three years. That shows a bit of a slowdown in the growth of the smartphone market, especially in North America and China – two of the larger markets for smartphones. However, by 2021, China will be closing in on a billion active smartphone users, at 918 million. That makes sense, that they would have nearly a quarter of the active smartphone base. Since China is around that a quarter of the world’s population. Now when it comes to revenue from apps and games, Newzoo also expects this to continue to grow, once we get to 2021. Overall, it’s expected to grow about 20.7-percent, to $139.6 billion. With apps revenue growing about 22.7-percent to $33.3 billion, and games revenue growing 20.1-percent to $106.4 billion.
