Nintendo Switch Online Crosses Five Million Companion App Downloads, 25% of Console's Install Base

It's been one week since Nintendo officially launched the online play component for its hit Switch console, the eponymous Nintendo Switch Online, on September 18. Now the latest Sensor Tower Store Intelligence figures reveal that the service's requisite mobile companion app has been installed by more than five million iOS and Android users worldwide to date, or about one quarter of the Switch's global install base of 20 million as of June 30.

Not surprisingly, Japan and the United States have driven the majority of Nintendo Switch Online companion app installs at 33 and 30 percent of the total, respectively. Breaking that down to the device level, about 60 percent of users obtained the app through Google Play, while the remaining 40 percent downloaded it from the App Store.

Launch Week Installs Grow 76%

As can be seen below, the official Nintendo Switch Online service's launch during the week of September 17 drove a significant increase in installs of the companion app worldwide, resulting in growth of 76 percent over the preceding week. Approximately 123,000 users downloaded the app for the first time last week, compared to about 70,000 the week before.

Again, most of these installs originated from Japan and the U.S. with the former seeing a 77 percent week-over-week uptick in downloads while the latter grew more substantially at 89 percent. The remaining countries saw a cumulative increase of 76 percent versus the previous period.

Nintendo Switch Online's companion app has been available since July of last year when it saw its single largest month of downloads at approximately one million worldwide. That figure is understandably outsized versus subsequent months, as several million Switch owners were already lined up to give the app a try following the console's March 2017 launch. By comparison, the app saw about 240,000 installs this July and approximately 268,000 last month.