The combined revenues generated by mobile games reached $41.5 billion in a single 12-month period -- more than 15 times higher than the $2.77 billion generated by the next biggest category, Entertainment.
That's according to Liftoff's Mobile App Trends Report, which looked at the entire breadth of apps on iOS and Android between September 1, 2018 and August 31, 2019.
During that time, iOS apps made $22.51 billion based on in-app purchases and advertising in games, while Android titles made $18.94 billion. The combined total was 4.27% higher than last year's $39.8 billion. Entertainment apps, meanwhile, made $2.42 billion on iOS, $351 million on Android.
The report also shared average retention rates, with casual games the fourth highest category on Day One, retaining 31.1% of users. This was only beaten by news, comics and social casino games, none of which were higher than 33%. For day seven, casual games' retention average dropped to 9.8%, then to 3.5% on Day 30.
Hardcore games, meanwhile, showed Day One, Seven and 30 retention rates of 29%, 9% and 3% respectively. Midcore games were reported at 29.3%, 7.3% and 2%.
The average time between installation and an in-app purchase for games was reported as one day, 22 hours and 35 minutes -- longer than shopping, dating and finance (the latter of which was one hour, ten minutes).
Games were also the biggest category in terms of the number of downloads. 15.3 million downloads were recorded on iOS and 41.2 million on Android, making for total of 56.5 million. Again, the second biggest category was Entertainment with 8.4 million (2.7 million on iOS, 5.7 million on Android) -- 573% lower than games.

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