Pokémon Go is already one of the most popular smartphone apps ever, but the adults you see walking around on the street aren’t just college kids and recent graduates.
More than 40 percent of the adults who downloaded the mobile app are older than 25, and about one in three adult users are women. This is according to data from StartApp, a company that tracks 600 million users for downloads and social usage. The company didn’t provide data on users under 18.
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It makes sense that younger demographics are playing more, since they are more likely to own a smartphone and more likely to have played the first Pokémon game when it was released 20 years ago.
But that large user base in the 25-and-older category is a big deal.
The app is only able to create a massive amount of value in digital candy because there is a wide enough belief that these things are valuable — whether it’s Pokémon you catch or items stashed away in neighborhood landmarks. And this data shows that even older audiences can find a critical mass of neighbors and peers who participate in this belief system.
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This gaming phenomenon isn’t unique to Pokémon Go, but the app uses digital candy to affect human behavior — and doing so on this scale is unique. Previous apps have been able to lure customers to physical locations with coupons or other real assets, but this app is able to do this with pixels alone. And to be able to do it with that 25- to 34-year-old demographic is especially impressive, because those social networks aren’t as tight as they are for college students and recent grads.
