Non-gaming apps overtake mobile games in IAP revenue since 2016, AppMagic finds

Mobile games last led in-app purchase revenue in 2016, per AppMagic's decade-long report. TikTok has topped the top-grossing chart every year since 2020. ChatGPT drew more downloads than any other app worldwide in 2025. Mobile gaming's own IAP growth now concentrates in a handful of titles. Download volume and IAP revenue have decoupled, splitting winners into two distinct profiles.

Mobile games held the top in-app purchase revenue spot through 2016.
TikTok has ranked the top-grossing app worldwide every year since 2020.
ChatGPT became the most downloaded app globally in 2025.
AppMagic's ten-year dataset frames 2016 as the start of a lasting shift.

Honor of Kings earned $830 million in its 2017 launch year.
Honor of Kings surpassed $1.1 billion in cumulative revenue by 2026.
The MOBA topped mobile revenue charts in six of the ten tracked years.
Free Fire launched in 2019 with 272 million downloads and zero revenue.
Free Fire has since accumulated $3.3 billion in lifetime IAP revenue.

Among Us drew 930 million downloads but generated only $52 million in revenue.
Umamusume earned $1.6 billion in revenue from just 19 million downloads.
Free Fire added 221 million more downloads in 2026 alone.
Install volume no longer predicts which mobile game captures IAP spend.

Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story grew revenue 95% year-on-year from January to October.
Century Games' Kingshot grew revenue 126% over the same period.
Honor of Kings still added 5% year-on-year despite its near decade-long run.
AppMagic counts only a handful of top-grossing games still growing revenue at all.

For Investors & VC: Add payer depth and ARPPU curves to diligence ahead of install-volume metrics.
For UA & Marketing: Shift budget toward value-optimized bidding on high-LTV payer cohorts over cheap installs.
For Service Vendors: Pitch LiveOps and monetization-design retainers to studios scaling merge-narrative and 4X titles.