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STORE INTELLIGENCE · RANDY NELSON · JULY 2016

Pokémon GO Hit 50 Million Downloads in Record Time, Now at More Than 75 Million Worldwide

No country is immune to Pokémon GO's chart-topping success, as yet another download record has fallen. Here's how that compares to other mobile gaming hits.

Pokemon GO 50 Million Download Milestone Hero Image

Niantic's smash hit Pokémon GO has barreled past another major lifetime milestone, having surpassed 50 million worldwide downloads on Google Play alone over the weekend. That not only makes it the fastest game to exceed 50 million installs on the platform, at just 19 days after launching in Australia and New Zealand on July 5, but also the fastest to that milestone ever for combined worldwide iOS and Android downloads.

In fact, since its launch, we now estimate that Pokémon GO has been installed more than 75 million times across Apple and Google's platforms globally, putting it in a class by itself for first-month mobile game downloads. To date, the game has been launched in just 32 of the more than 100 markets in which the App Store and Google Play operate, with more on the way. In all available App Store territories, the game is ranked No. 1 for downloads and revenue, including France and Hong Kong, its two most recently added regions.

In this post, we'll look at how Pokémon GO's more than 50 million downloads in 19 days compares to other mobile gaming mega-hits.

Pokémon GO has already blown by 2016's other big launches, including Supercell's Clash Royale, in the race to 50 million worldwide downloads. Despite launching four months earlier, Clash Royale is still working its way towards this milestone—but to its credit, so are most other mobile games at this point in their lifespans.

In the chart below, you can see that even other members of the 50 million club from the past two years have taken significantly longer to achieve that degree of reach:

Number of Days It Took Pokemon GO to Reach 50 Million Worldwide Downloads Compared to Other Top Mobile Games

Even Color Switch and Slither.io, two games that were seemingly everywhere following their releases and consistently at the top of the App Store Games category download charts for weeks, didn't hit the 50 million mark for nearly three months into their release.

King's most recent Candy Crush spin-off, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, surpassed 50 million installs after just over three months, but even it did so with the help of copious mobile, web, and real world advertising. So far, Pokémon GO has yet to be featured on the App Store or Google Play in any country, and only ran a limited number of app install ads for three days following its launch, according to our Ad Intelligence platform.

For most mobile games and apps, even reaching 10 million downloads is a marathon, but Pokémon GO made that and 50 million in a sprint. As it rolls out in additional regions over the coming weeks, the size of the markets will get smaller, but it will no doubt still hit the ground running. It may not be unreasonable for the game to pass 100 million downloads in its first 60 days, especially if some of the planned gameplay updates hit sooner rather than later.


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Randy Nelson

Written by: Randy Nelson, Head of Mobile Insights

Date: July 2016