The summer of arrows came to an end, and with it a trend that caught on quickly and then mostly faded away.

Roblox retained its #1 position in August after regaining it in July. Arrows - Puzzle Escape had dethroned it in June.

Appfigures Intelligence shows Roblox made its way onto 20M new devices in August. That's a bit less than July and a bit more than June, so I'd call it a pretty even summer.

Subway Surfers rose into #2 with 18M estimated downloads, more than 50% higher than its sluggish summer start in June.

The arrow trend we observed in June hasn't fully vanished. Arrow Puzzle landed at #5 - but June's winner, Arrows - Puzzle Escape, fell out of the top 10.

Together, the top 10 most downloaded games saw 127M downloads, a touch less than July.

Read the full breakdown

Roblox's return to the top of the downloads chart did not translate into enough revenue to make the revenue chart. The winner there was Honor of Kings, which has held the top spot for a few months now.

According to our estimates, Honor of Kings earned $108M after store fees in August. It's incredible to see a China-only + iOS-only release dominate the chart.

Gossip Harbor climbed into second place with $105M, the most the game has earned in a single month so far!

Whiteout Survival, Royal Match, and PUBG Mobile rounded out the top five.

Together, the top 10 highest earners generated $861M in net revenue after store fees in August. That's a little less than July but more than June, making for a fairly stable summer.

Read the full breakdown

The streaming war has a new front - a growing collection of apps built around dramas that last a few minutes at a time. And the scale is staggering!

We analyzed the downloads of the top short-drama apps alongside the top movie streaming apps. According to Appfigures Intelligence, short-drama apps account for 39% of the total in 2025, up from 26% in 2024. Between January and July 2026, short dramas held 36% of the total, and their share rose to roughly 44% in July alone.

I've been waiting for the short-drama "spike" to end for quite a while now, but it's not going to, and traditional streamers should be concerned.

For traditional streamers to compete they need standalone short-drama apps of their own. I'm sure it'll happen at some point, but will that happen before short dramas take more than 50%?

And that’s super important because viewers only have so much time for video. Every new short-drama install gives ReelShort or DramaBox another chance to become the app someone opens instead of Peacock, Disney+, or another traditional streamer.

This is an insight from our industry report on short drama apps. Explore the full report →

Once a mobile format starts working, the clones arrive. Short drama has moved well beyond that phase into a full-on gold rush.

1,140 short-drama apps were released to the App Store and Google Play between January and July 2026.

Crazy, right? What's even crazier is that this total is almost as high as all of 2025, which was already nearly 3x 2024's total.

In just 19 months, the stores added more short-drama apps than they did during the previous five years combined.

Most of those apps won't become the next ReelShort, one of the most popular short drama apps, but the flood is an important signal that publishers see enough demand, spending, and room for differentiation to keep funding new catalogs.

This is an insight from our industry report on short drama apps. Explore the full report →

ReelShort continues to be short drama's biggest name, but the flood of new apps is starting to get real traction and the niche is changing quickly.

ReelShort's share of consumer spending among the top five fell from 44% in January 2025 to 32% in July 2026.

DramaBox slipped from 27% to 25%. Together, the two largest apps went from 72% of the group to just 57%. NetShort moved the other way, rising from just 2% to 14%, a gain that matched ReelShort's decline.

And that's good news for publishers because it shows the short drama niche isn't a winner-take-all category. Instead, it's an ongoing fight for user acquisition powered by content.

Acquiring and keeping. More than two out of every five dollars among these five apps went to the other three in July. Viewers can switch apps as soon as another catalog has the story they want. In this market, the next hit matters more than being first, which is again, why traditional streamers should really jump into this still open market.

This is an insight from our industry report on short drama apps. Explore the full report →