Mobile app spending climbs 21.6% despite five-year download decline

Global mobile app downloads have declined for the fifth consecutive year, according to a report by app intelligence firm Appfigures. In 2025, global downloads of all mobile apps and mobile games across the App Store and Google Play reached an estimated 106.9 billion, which is 2.7% lower than the 109.8 billion recorded in 2024. This follows a 3.3% decline in downloads between 2023 and 2024, moving further away from the all-time high of 135 billion downloads in 2020. However, consumer spending climbed 21.6% year-over-year to reach an estimated $155.8 billion in 2025, bringing total consumer spending to nearly $156B.

This revenue growth is driven by the subscription economy and in-app purchases, which have helped boost mobile app revenues even as new user acquisitions slow. The data shows a continuing shift away from mobile games as the primary driver of app economy revenue. In 2025, global consumer spending on mobile games reached $72.2 billion, representing about 46% of total app spending. While game spending grew 10% year-over-year, spending on non-game apps grew much faster. Non-game app spending increased 33.9% year-over-year to reach $82.6 billion. This growth occurred despite a decline in game downloads, which fell 8.6% year-over-year to 39.4 billion (following a 6.6% decline from 2023 to 2024). Meanwhile, non-game app downloads saw a slight increase of 1.1% to reach 67.4 billion.

The transition toward recurring subscription models has supported a secondary ecosystem of business-to-business service providers. For instance, RevenueCat, a subscription management platform, raised a $50 million Series C (a late-stage venture capital funding round). Similarly, Appcharge, a startup that helps mobile games improve their monetization, announced a $58 million Series B (a mid-stage funding round) in August. Further consolidating this trend, Liftoff Mobile, a company that helps market and monetize apps, filed for an IPO (Initial Public Offering, the process of taking a company public) this week.

The U.S. market mirrored these global dynamics of rising revenues alongside falling download volumes. In 2025, the U.S. app economy performed as follows:

• Consumer Spending: Total spending reached an estimated $55.5 billion, up 18.1% from $47 billion in 2024.
• App Downloads: Total downloads fell 4.2% to 10 billion, down from 10.4 billion in 2024.
• Non-Game Apps: Spending rose 26.8% to $33.6 billion, while downloads reached an estimated 7.1 billion.
• Mobile Games: Spending rose just 6.8% to $21.9 billion, with downloads reaching 2.9 billion.

Why it matters

The report highlights that developers are successfully pivoting to subscription and in-app purchase models to drive revenue, effectively decoupling financial growth from the volume of new user acquisitions.