Growth in Asia-Pacific’s app economy has become genuinely difficult to read, according to AppsFlyer‘s newly released State of Marketing in APAC 2026 report, which found install volumes and monetisation moving in opposite directions across key verticals.

The report draws on 30 billion installs across nearly 12,000 apps and US$6.7 billion in ad spend, across a mobile economy that contributed an estimated US$1 trillion to the region’s GDP in 2025.

Finance and gaming tell opposite stories

The clearest example is the contrast between Finance and Gaming apps. Finance installs grew across APAC — organic installs on Android rose 55 per cent in India alone — yet Finance’s share of paying users fell in some of its strongest Southeast Asian markets. Gaming moved the opposite way: Android installs fell between 17 and 26 per cent across every APAC sub-region, even as its share of paying users grew, including 29 per cent in the Indian Subcontinent on iOS and 28 per cent in Indonesia on Android.

Other findings from the report include:

• Day 30 retention declined across all four verticals, regions and platforms tracked, even where Day 7 retention held up
• Finance remarketing conversions in Indonesia grew 268 per cent on Android, against just 3 per cent growth in paid installs over the same period
• Entertainment user-acquisition spend in Vietnam grew 194 per cent on Android, more than seven times the regional pace
• Gaming’s Android fraud rate in Japan rose 68 per cent and Entertainment’s iOS fraud rate in the Indian Subcontinent rose 170 per cent, even as regional fraud averages improved

Install counts alone no longer tell the story

AppsFlyer said the divergence between installs and monetisation means marketers who size budgets purely on install volume risk scaling the wrong campaigns while missing where revenue is actually strengthening. The report calls for closer tracking of retention and paying-user trends alongside raw install growth when allocating regional marketing spend.

The State of Marketing in APAC 2026 report covers Finance, Gaming, Entertainment and other verticals across the region’s major markets.