Call of Duty: Mobile Has Second Largest Launch Month Ever With 148 Million Downloads

Call of Duty: Mobile delivered an incredibly strong first month performance, amassing an estimated 148 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates. This makes the Tencent-developed shooter based on Activision’s blockbuster property the second most successful mobile game launch of all time in terms of first-month downloads after Niantic's Pokémon GO, stripping the also recently released Mario Kart Tour of its short-lived time in the No. 2 position.

In the past month, Call of Duty: Mobile averaged 4.9 million downloads daily across both the App Store and Google Play, peaking on October 1—with nearly 24 million downloads in a 24-hour period—contributing to a record-breaking first week. The United States led the way for downloads, generating 23.6 million, or 16 percent, of all installs. The region Call of Duty: Mobile proved second most popular in was India, with 16.2 million, or 11 percent of all downloads.

In terms of revenue, Call of Duty: Mobile grossed $53.9 million, reaching a single-day high of $3.1 million spent by players on October 5. The United States was again the leader in this metric, with $22.8 million, or 16 percent of the total, spent within the first month; Japan came in second with $7 million, or 4 percent.

While downloads were split evenly between Google Play and the App Store, iOS players were more generous with their spending, with Apple’s platform contributing 60 percent of all revenue.

Call of Duty: Mobile’s first-month performance also overshadowed other heavyweights in the mobile shooter genre. It more than quadrupled Fortnite’s launch month downloads of 35 million and doubled its $27.1 million in gross revenue. (These figures represent Fortnite’s first month on the App Store, as the title is not available on Google Play and third-party storefront numbers are not included in our estimates.)

Call of Duty: Mobile more than doubled the close to 60.7 million downloads that PUBG Mobile saw in the month following its worldwide launch. Likewise, Call of Duty: Mobile’s first-month player spending towered over the $3.5 million generated by PUBG Mobile in the month after it began monetizing, totaling 1,440 percent more than Tencent’s title.

Will Call of Duty: Mobile’s success continue? Now that the shooter’s drawn in an audience of millions, Activision will likely spend the next few months fine-tuning its monetization model like Tencent did for PUBG Mobile. We’ve seen just how successful that has proven, with PUBG Mobile recently hitting $1 billion in revenue, so this is likely just the beginning of an impressive journey for Call of Duty.