Apps have supplanted games for total in-app consumer spend annually for the first time, with apps generating $84.1 billion and games $82.7 billion.
The growth of in-app subscriptions across many categories over the past three years has come up against the stalling of game revenues during that same time period. Apps such as TikTok, Google One and ChatGPT top the charts for top grossing apps, with billions spent on them every year.
App and game consumer spend 2016 to 2025 ($bn)
Total consumer spend on apps and games was up 11.1 percent in 2025 to $166.8 billion according to our app revenues data, with about 70 percent of this spend coming from iOS.
As the chart shows, it is less about game spend declining and more about the quarter-on-quarter growth of app spend. In 2025, consumer spending on apps increased by 20.8 percent, compared to only 2.4 percent for games.
The growth of apps seems to be benefiting iOS more than Google Play, with iOS revenues up 11.1 percent to Google Play’s 5.3 percent.
It’s not all doom and gloom for games. For starters, games make up only about 10 percent of the total app market in terms of number of apps. Google and Apple have also been more active in removing games from both their stores in the past few years, potentially hampering growth.
We are also only looking at consumer spend, which is tracked through in-app purchases and subscriptions. A lot of newer games, for example in the hypercasual genre, run purely on ads. Mobile ad spend is estimated to be around two and a half times bigger than the in-app purchase market.
