Fortnite was removed from the App Store and Google Play on August 13, 2020, after implementing its own payment system. It had generated over $1.2 billion in revenue, mostly from iOS, and 144 million downloads. Its departure leaves a major gap in the mobile battle royale market, which is dominated by PUBG Mobile ($3.5B).
In 2020, Fortnite earned $293M, with $283M from the App Store. In the U.S., it ranked first with $181M. Competitors like Call of Duty: Mobile saw a 69% revenue increase after its removal, but it's unclear if any title can fully replace Fortnite's cultural impact.
Only 2% of App Store games revenue comes from publishers earning under $1M. Apple's new 85/15 split for small developers benefits few, while top earners (2.7% of publishers) account for 97.4% of revenue.
Pokémon GO earned $1B in first 10 months of 2020, its best year yet. Despite pandemic, it thrived with stay-at-home features. US leads revenue at $1.5B. It ranks No.3 in global player spending.
AppsFlyer’s 2026 creative data shows video and static image ads reward opposite creative qualities, so ad ops teams should plan, budget, and test them separately. Video spend is concentrating: gaming’s top 2% of video creatives captured 60.7% of spend, up from 53.5%, while image spend spread out. Top spenders are testing far more variations, widening the testing gap. Action/Strategy and Puzzle/Lifestyle show format-specific tone and social-proof reversals; Finance is the exception. Teams should use AI-assisted variation, analyze video winners deeply, keep broad image testing, and measure performance at attribute level.
TikTok faces potential U.S. ban, leading to a 361% surge in installs for competitors Triller, Zynn, Dubsmash, and Byte. TikTok's global installs declined 25% in July. Competitors capitalized on uncertainty, with Triller and Byte seeing massive week-over-week growth. The situation mirrors India's ban, where rivals like Snack Video and Likee gained traction. ByteDance's challenges create opportunities for other apps to grow audiences.
September mobile gaming softened overall but delivered clear live-ops wins. Global consumer spending hit $6.13B, down 7% MoM, with the US at 28.7%, China iOS 15.7%, and Japan 12.4%. Downloads reached 3.56B, down 5.2%, led by India at 16.2%. ROBLOX topped downloads and revenue growth; Honor of Kings stayed strong via seasonal content; Candy Crush and Pokémon GO used music, celebrity, and event-driven engagement. For ad ops, prioritize event-aligned UA/retargeting, IP collaborations, seasonal battle passes, and localized creatives for US/India/Brazil. Monitor launch spikes from Bus Fever Party!, Honor of Kings Chess, and Brain Puzzle 3 to time bids and creative refreshes.
Contact tracing apps in 13 populous countries have about 9.3% adoption. Australia leads with 21.6%. Germany's app reached 10.4M downloads in a month. India has most total downloads at 127.6M.
Mobile CPI and app store fees are eroding ROAS, making web gaming a viable acquisition channel. Full Unity-to-HTML5 ports now deliver 30-50% lower CAC and avoid 15-30% store revenue cuts via web payments. Measurement parity is here: AppsFlyer enables independent attribution, conversion signals, and unified reporting. Retention can improve; one strategy title jumped from 6-7 minutes mobile to 70+ minutes web. Best fit: deep RPG, strategy, puzzle, story games, not hypercasual. Action: audit catalog, pilot web ports, link accounts cross-platform, and use owned media to drive high-intent web users.
Adjust has expanded store detection and verification across multiple app storefronts, making Store Type the primary dimension for identifying where an install originated rather than relying on platform or OS alone. For ad ops teams, this means campaign performance can now be analyzed at the store level across Huawei AppGallery, Xiaomi GetApps, Samsung Galaxy Store, Vivo Appstore, and Google Play variants, with independent verification of install origin. Newly detected stores are flagged in AppView with a direct route to configuration, and store-level data flows automatically into reporting, raw data, callbacks, and CSV exports, plus Conversion Rules via Store Rule conditions.
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