According to Sensor Tower, who is a market intelligence company, Pokémon Go’s global revenue had a 35% increase in 2018, compared to 2017. Niantic made approximately $795 million last year.
Which countries spent the most money
Based on the information from Sensor Tower, the app had quite a strong December, when players all over the world spent through Google Play and App Store more than $75 million. If we compare this amount to the one that was spent back in December 2017, which was $57.2 million, we notice an increase of 32%.
The Pokémon Go players that spent the most money last year were those from the United States, who managed to spend an estimated $262 million, which is 33% of the whole gross revenue. On the second place we have Japanese players, who spent $239 million on this popular augmented reality game, which represents 30% of the gross revenue – an increase of 25% compared to the year before.
How did Niantic manage to achieve this
The San Francisco-based company added a number of new features and content to the game in 2018, which clearly helped attracting new players and engaging the existing ones. One of the most important additions was trainer vs. trainer battles last December, a feature that was heavily requested before by fans. Another thing that probably contributed to this success was the introduction of two new social features throughout last summer: Pokémon trading and friendships. More than that, the new Mythical Pokémon called Meltan that was introduced in September also helped engaging Niantic’s player base.
To have an idea about what kind of impact the last two features that we mentioned had on the app, learn that they generated an increased activity of at least 35% in no less than three months, which is quite a lot. During that time, more than 113 million people made friends in the game and apparently more than 2.2 billion gifts were exchanged.
Frances might be just at the beginning of her career, but after attending a technical school, she has a fresh perspective on today’s technology. She contributes to the site with tech news.