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With the advent of affordable mobile devices and widespread access to high-speed internet and 4G networks, mobile game developers have irrefutably usurped the gaming crown from their PC and console-based rivals.
But this brave new world of mobile gaming brings with it a unique set of challenges. While the Xbox One boasts nearly 2,500 games, and Playstation 4 offers over 2,600, Google Play offers gamers nearly half a million options. Indeed, based on our calculations — which you can find on our app store stats pages — that’s just under 13% of all apps available on the platform. As such, mobile game studios face the daunting challenge of standing out in a crowded market.
So, to help connect developers with their target consumers, Google has created 49 app and game categories. These range from ‘Action’, to ‘Puzzle’, to ‘Trivia’, and beyond. In this piece, we’ll cover the best game categories on Google Play by downloads over the last year. The data provided will be updated automatically on a weekly basis.
Now, before we go much further, we’d like to remind the mobile game designers out there that, because Google’s categories often overlap and vary in specificity, determining the best categories for your games requires some extra brainpower.
Compounding matters: one cannot assume that by selecting the most precise or best-sounding categories they will achieve the best possible results. So, that ‘extra brainpower’ will require some real-world insights into the mobile game market.
This is where game category download estimate trends come into play; these estimates provide valuable insight into the popularity of each category. This information can then be used by game developers to avoid downward trending categories and identify those on the rise. It can also be used to identify less competitive categories (i.e. those with fewer games) that appear to be on an upswing in terms of downloads.
If your head is already spinning, don’t worry! In what follows, we will provide a starting point for navigating the deceptively tricky process of picking the best categories for your games. We’ll cover:
Onward!
Let’s begin by examining game categories that are on the up and up. The data you will find in the following chart is from –
As you can see, Educational leads the pack with 17.48% increase in monthly downloads, followed by Board at 9.32%, Word at 6.92%, Music at 7.26%, and Word at 6.92%.
Contact us for a free consultation to see which game categories round out the best 10
Let’s examine these categories separately.
– trend for Educational
In the graph below you will find how Educational fared in the period between and . In Educational was trending upwards, registering a change in downloads of 10.14%. By , it had reached 32.88%, trending downwards.
– trend for Board
Now for Board. Once again, the period we’re looking at is and . In Board was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 7.25%. By , it had reached 20.24%, trending downwards.
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– trend for Word
Moving on, here’s how Trivia fared in the period between and . In Trivia was trending downwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of -3.42%. By , it had reached 18.34%, trending downwards.
– trend for Music
In the following chart you will find how Music fared in the period between and . In Music was trending downwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of -1.02%. By , it had reached 20.78%, trending downwards.
– trend for Word
Here you will find how Word fared in the period between and . In Word was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 3.49%. By , it had reached 2.99%, trending downwards.
Now let’s take a look at some app categories that aren’t doing so well. This data is for –
At the time of this analysis, Casino took the biggest hit with a -8.55% decline in downloads over the month; followed by Simulation which dropped by -5.32%, Strategy which dropped by -1.2%, Casual which dropped by 0.09%, and Puzzle which dropped by 1.46%.
Contact us for a free consultation and we’ll show you which categories complete the ‘bottom’ 10.
Once again, let’s examine each category separately.
– trend for Casino
In the graph below you will find how Casino fared in the period between and . In Casino was trending downwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of -1.38%. By , it had reached -13.74%, trending downwards.
– trend for Simulation
Here you will find how Simulation fared in the period between and . In Simulation was trending downwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of -3.39%. By , it had reached -7.82%, trending downwards.
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– trend for Strategy
Below you will find how Strategy fared in the period between and . In Strategy was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 1.83%. By , it had reached -8.17%, trending downwards.
– trend for Casual
In the following chart you will find how Casual fared in the period between and . In Casual was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 5.06%. By , it had reached -7.64%, trending downwards.
– trend for Puzzle
Here you will find how Puzzle fared in the period between and . In Puzzle was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 1.8%. By , it had reached 4.18%, trending downwards.
Now, it’s important to remember that not all app categories are alike — some are naturally larger than others. For instance, there will be more apps filed under ‘Games’ than under ‘Casino’, since ‘Casino’ is more or less a subset of ‘Games’.
However, it should not be assumed that because one category has more competition than another that it will therefore represent a larger share of global downloads. Indeed, it’s possible that less competitive categories can be overrepresented in global downloads owing to the extreme popularity of one or some of its apps.
In any case, these natural differences in app categories present app publishers with a dilemma:
This is a challenging question; and, of course, the answer varies from business to business. Still, with this in mind, we’ve taken a look at the top 5 ‘large’ (i.e. more competitive) and ‘small’ (i.e. less competitive) categories to offer app publishers a starting point to address it.
We begin with the best 5 ‘large’ categories. The following chart depicts annual downloads by category as a percentage of the sum of annual downloads for the top five categories. So, the percentages here should add up to 100%.
As you can see, Action ranks highest with 39,161 apps representing 15.7% of global downloads. Arcade comes next with 72,091 apps making up 13.55% of global downloads. Then comes Casual with 13.49% making up 79,736 apps of global downloads. Then Simulation with 10.38% making up 33,164 apps of global downloads. Then, finally, Puzzle with 72,927 apps making up 9.47% of global downloads.
Contact us for a free consultation to see which categories round out the best 10!
Now the welterweights. Just as before, the following chart depicts annual downloads by category as a percentage of the sum of annual downloads for the top five categories. The percentages here should add up to 100% as well.
Here you’ll find that Board ranks highest with 14,075 apps representing 2.22% of global downloads. Card comes next with 11,327 apps making up 1.65% of global downloads. Then comes Trivia with 17,975 apps making up 1% of global downloads. Then Word with 13,927 apps making up 1% of global downloads. Then, finally, Casino with 8,552 apps making up 0.77% of global downloads.
So, those are the best Google Play app categories by 2021-2022 download trends. By now we’ve hopefully done enough to show you that selecting the best categories for your app is not merely a descriptive exercise. It is, in fact, a critical piece to driving downloads.
Still, it is not the only factor. You’ll need to consider:
By understanding how these things work and how successful apps are leveraging them, you’ll be better positioned to build a profitable mobile business.
Don’t let this overwhelm you. Schedule a free demo and we’ll walk you through everything.
42matters tracks everything from app meta data, to rankings, to download estimates, to changes in meta information, to SDK usage, to App-ads.txt and more. If you would like to leverage our data into your own product, research or app industry analysis, it can be obtained via our API or File Dumps or our interactive App Market Explorer.
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