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PUBG Mobile has reached another milestone, surpassing $9 billion in total consumer spending. According to Sensor Tower, App Store and Google Play users have installed PUBG Mobile 1.1 billion times and spent an average of $5.2 million per day.
PUBG Mobile launched in March 2018, just a year after the launch of the PC beta on Steam. PUBG Mobile benefited from being the first major PC-based battle royale to make the jump to the platform. Fortnite launched on iOS about two weeks later. Fortnite is of course no longer in the App Store. This likely benefited Tencent, Krafton, and Level Infinite published titles. Of course, it still has healthy competition from mobile native battle royales like Free Fire.
However, the recent downturn in the mobile games market impacted PUBG Mobile. In the first three quarters of 2022, players downloaded PUBG Mobile 104.4 million times and spent a total of $1.6 billion. Both metrics are down about 27% compared to the same period in 2021 ($142 million and $2.2 billion, respectively) according to Sensor Tower.
Sensor Tower’s analysis does not include BattleGrounds Mobile India (BGMI) – the Indian-only version of PUBG Mobile. This is probably due to the different government bans which have stunted the growth of the app and explains why it is not currently available for download. BGMI was extremely popular in India, reaching 100 million registered users just before the app was banned.
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