Adjust’s all-app growth rate cannot stand in for gaming

Adjust reports 13% install growth and 5% session growth for its worldwide H1 2026 app sample. Those headline figures should not be relabelled as mobile-game growth. H1 update.

Keep the label attached to the statistic

The report description covers multiple app verticals. A broad app result can provide context for the environment around games, but it does not reveal the movement of a gaming-only population. The distinction matters when a slide claims that a studio is outperforming or lagging its market.

Our recommendation is to retain publisher, period, vertical and metric in the same table cell or chart caption. Do not rely on a footnote several pages away to restore the scope. When the correct gaming measure is unavailable, mark it unavailable instead of borrowing a nearby total.

Compare like with like inside the studio

Before comparing internal growth with the report, check whether your count includes the same kinds of installs and whether the comparison uses the same months. A studio adding games or markets can grow while each existing cohort behaves differently; aggregate growth and underlying performance answer different questions.

The attached card leaves the update’s detailed weighting and matched-panel construction unknown. That limit does not make the public result unusable. It makes its useful role narrower: directional vendor-sample context, with no claim that the percentage is a complete census or a target for an individual game.

Inspect the evidence

Download the source-population and comparability card. The extraction separates documented facts from our analysis and unknowns.

Further reading in the existing archive: The state of mobile game acquisition in 2026; The UA reading list: reports and benchmarks that matter. These links provide background; this check does not independently verify their full contents.