The cellular panorama noticed progress throughout the board within the MENA area (Center East and North Africa) in 2022, with app retailer spending growing 10.3% year-on-year to $3.1 billion in line with Information.ai’s State of Cell MENA 2023 report.
Day by day time spent grew 3% to 4.5%, whereas new downloads elevated a large 45.7% to 13.8 billion – a mean of 26,200 apps downloaded per minute.
Customers in Saudi Arabia proved to be essentially the most engaged of the nation’s key mobile-first markets (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Israel), with a mean of 5.5 hours spent on their telephones per day – a full hour greater than customers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates who every averaged 4.5 hours per day. Over the previous 4 years, time spent in-app grew 74% within the nation.
Nonetheless, within the wider MENAP (Center East, North Africa and Pakistan) area, Saudi Arabia was eclipsed by way of hours spent in recreation. Pakistan got here in sixth place by way of time spent worldwide, with a cumulative 161.2 billion hours spent in recreation, in comparison with 27.4 million hours in Saudi Arabia, which was ranked as twenty eighth within the record.
Pakistan additionally noticed robust progress by way of downloads, growing 35% year-on-year to three.5 billion. This was adopted by Saudi Arabia at 1.7 billion and Algeria at 1.1 billion.
Levelling up
Client spend on gaming within the GCC market – the political and financial alliance between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – fell 15% to $904 million year-on-year, reflecting a worldwide decline within the cellular gaming business following the pandemic. Downloads additionally dropped 2% throughout the area to 1 billion.
The hypercasual style proved to be the preferred within the MENA area with 2.6 billion downloads, a progress of 28.4%. The style accounted for 31% of all downloads. This was adopted by the simulation style at 18%, with 1.5 billion downloads. Just one different style, Motion, exceeded 10% of downloads with 11%.
When it comes to client spend, the technique style proved to be essentially the most profitable within the area, accounting for $399.2 million in in-app spending, representing 21% of the overall. This was adopted by the taking pictures style at $280.4 million.
Subway Surfers proved to be a selected success by way of installs, topping the obtain charts in seven nations and coming in second place in two extra. Nonetheless, PUBG Cell was the standout by way of MAU – topping the charts in six markets – and client spending, the place it got here primary in eight nations all through the area.
Final month, Information.ai reported that 98% of all app retailer spend comes from one time purchases.
