What Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 can tell a small studio — and where data.ai is silent

A small studio cannot currently open a dated, public data.ai 2026 State of Mobile methodology. The industry report that answers the same reader job — store downloads, IAP revenue, time spent, games versus non-games — is Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026, summarised on the January 2026 blog. This card uses that public cut. It does not invent a data.ai sample to fill the gap.

The $82 billion games IAP figure already has a canonical card: Sensor Tower’s $82 billion figure is an IAP measure. Downloads versus that revenue figure are split in Sensor Tower’s cross-platform download total. Do not treat this edition as a second IAP census. Its job is narrower: record that a separate data.ai 2026 methodology was not found, and that a small studio’s MMP numbers still do not inherit the store-intelligence population.

What the public Sensor Tower cut actually measures

The blog (Jonathan Briskman, January 2026) reports, for 2025, across iOS and Google Play:

• Downloads up 0.8% year on year to nearly 150 billion.
• Time spent 5.3 trillion hours (+3.8%), or about 3.6 hours per day per mobile user.
• IAP plus paid-app revenue $167 billion (+10.6%).
• Games IAP “approaching $82 billion” (+1.3%), a third consecutive year of games revenue growth, with downloads down and time spent slightly up.

Non-game IAP is described as having surpassed games for the first time.

The PDF methodology pages (also issued as Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2026) state: Android estimates are Google Play only, not third-party Android stores; IAP revenue includes paid downloads, in-app purchases and subscriptions from iOS and Play; advertising and third-party purchases are excluded; downloads are per user account; IAP is gross of store commission; China figures are iOS only; games use Sensor Tower’s taxonomy as of January 2026; period 1 January 2014–31 December 2025 for the long series, with 2025 as the featured year.

What a small studio must not do with those numbers

A puzzle studio’s D7 ROAS is not a slice of the $82 billion. That figure is estimated store consumer spend for a classified games universe. It cannot set a bid, a creative quota, or a “healthy” genre CPI.

Download the comparability card.

Background: The benchmark report is selling you something. Use the two Sensor Tower cards above for the $82 billion / download-scope claims; this edition does not recertify them.

Research checked 19 September 2026. Local draft; human editorial review pending.