Data.ai: in 2022, global mobile app spending fell 2% YoY to $167B, downloads grew 11% YoY to 255B, game spending fell 5% YoY, and non-game spending grew 6% YoY
data.ai REPORT The State of Mobile 2023: How to Navigate … Stuart Dredge / Music Ally : App store spending fell by 2% in 2022 (but it was still $167bn) Tweets: @dataai : The State of Mobile 2023 report has landed! Ready to take a trip around the world of mobile? Let's visit some key numbers: 🔥255B new app downloads 💰$167B in app store spend ⏰5 hours spent per user daily 📣$336B in ad spend Get your copy now 👉 https://www.data.ai/... https://twitter.com/... Horace Dediu / @asymco : The iOS ecosystem will cross $5 trillion in cumulative total billings and sales in a few months. 90% occurred outside the App Store.
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2022 numbers in data.ai's State of Mobile report break a streak: from App Annie's ~$100B in 2018 spending through the pandemic-era surge to $112B in 2020, store spend had only climbed. A 2% decline — driven entirely by a 5% drop in game spending while non-game spend grew 6% — marks the first contraction in the series this coverage tracks, with downloads still up 11% to 255B.
The rebound came fast: data.ai's next annual report recorded spending back up 3% to $171B with non-game spending accelerating to 11% growth, confirming 2022 as a games-led dip rather than a structural peak. That makes this report the pivot point separating the pandemic download boom from the monetization-led phase that followed.
First-order effects
- Game publishers face their first annual spending decline in the tracked series, while non-game app developers see growth continue at 6% — the pain is concentrated, not market-wide.
- With store spend falling but ad spend reaching $336B per the report's own figures, ad-supported monetization gains ground over in-app purchases as the growth engine developers build against.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Google face slower commission growth on a flat store-spend base, sharpening the value of their take rates just as the non-game category — subscriptions especially — becomes the growth line they must protect.
- Developers reading the games decline shift budget toward hybrid models that pair ads with purchases, feeding the very ad market ($336B) that is outgrowing the stores themselves.
Third-order effects
- The pattern this report starts holds in later data: Appfigures shows downloads turning negative in 2024 and 2025 while spending keeps rising, meaning the market's growth now comes from extracting more per user rather than adding users — a monetization-over-volume structure that favors incumbents with installed bases.
- As growth decouples from downloads, competition shifts from user acquisition to retention and pricing power, raising the strategic weight of platform rules and take-rate disputes for every developer dependent on the two stores.
The trend: Mobile's app economy is transitioning from a download-driven growth market to a mature one where spending growth depends on monetizing existing users, with 2022's games-led dip as the inflection.