Korean MZers become world's biggest spenders on mobile games

South Korean millennials and Gen Zers have become the world's biggest spenders on mobile games with the MZers accounting for over 90% of domestic mobile game users.

According to a recent report by mobile research firm AppAnnie, Korean gamers spent a monthly average of $13 on mobile games in the first half of this year, up by 25% from the previous year. The data was based on Android phones, which account for more than 90% of the domestic smartphone market.

On Android phones, Korean gamers spent the most amount of money per person, followed by Japan ($12.7), the US ($6.1), Canada ($5.2) and Australia ($5.2).

Most of the domestic game users were MZers based on the country’s top 1,000 popular games, according to AppAnnie. Also, Korea had the largest portion of Gen Z gamers globally.

Korean gamers spent most of their money on domestic games, which accounted for a 33% market share among 1,000 top-grossing games, followed by games made in China, Japan, the US and Russia.

In the first half of this year, Roblox was the most played game among Korean mobile game users. Coming in second and third place were Devsisters Corporation's popular mobile game CookieRun Kingdom and Supercell's Brawl Stars. During the same period, the No. 1 downloaded game was Netmarble Corp.’s Cross Worlds while the highest-grossing game was NCSoft Corp.'s Lineage M.

Globally, Krafton Inc.'s PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile accounted for the most number of users in the first half of the year while Roblox was the highest-grossing game. Also, Supersonic Studios Ltd.'s Join Clash 3D was the most downloaded game globally.

Write to Joo-wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com
Danbee Lee edited this article.