The top games of 2016
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Sensor Tower: Q4 game revenues grew 70%, downloads up 33%

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Mobile game revenues grew 70 percent in the fourth quarter to $7.5 billion, compared to $4.4 billion a year earlier, according to mobile measurement firm Sensor Tower.

iOS revenue grew 62 percent to $4.4 billion in Q4 from $2.7 billion in the same period a year earlier. Google Play revenue grew even faster to $3.1 billion, up 84 percent from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Altogether, mobile games were 80 percent of revenue in Q4 on Apple’s App Store and 90 percent of Google Play revenue. When viewed alongside rival market research App Annie’s year-end results, the Sensor Tower data fills in another part of the picture about mobile games in 2016.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.