The Pokmon Go peak is over, but the game is still on top

The "Pokmon Go" craze may have peaked, but the mobile game is still ridiculously popular.Popular enough thatthere are still regular reports of hundredsof people stampedingin search of a Snorlax. Someone was killed just last week in Japan by a driver who admitted to playing "Pokmon Go" whiledriving.Popular enough thatit's still the biggest moneymaker in mobile gaming right now.It's the number one grossing game on Google Play, as well as the iTunes App Store (according to App Annie).The recent reports of its imminent decline miss several key points, says Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad."Pokmon Go" exploded in popularity, and rapidly launched in many countries. It's the fastest downloadedanything on both iPhone and Android. That puts the game into a rare category of mega-hit. Simply put: the kind of user numbers that "Pokmon Go" initially enjoyed are unsustainable. Remember when it had more users than Twitter' That was never going to last.Thetapering off of those record-setting, astronomic numbers is entirely expected. Ahmad described the effect as, "what one would expect when looking at [daily active user]numbers, that the number will decrease over time and begin to level out at a much lower number."Indeed, that's exactly what the data shows:If anything, the strangest part of this chart is the frontwhere the game goes from unknown to 50 millionusers in one month. "The game achieved record revenue figures in its first month, higher than that of 'Clash Royale' (the previous record holder)," says Ahmad. "Pokmon Go" is the fastest game to hit 50 million installs on the Google Play store (by a huge margin), and already has more than 100 million installs through Google Play."Something particularly interesting that this chart demonstrates is how many people arestill playing "Pokmon Go." If I'm being honest, I'm not one of those folksI opened it this morning for the first time in several weeks, and only because I was writing about the game. And I'm less likely these days to see a gaggle of people hanging around the front of my local park battling for control of the Gym.But as of August 18, over 40 million people are still actively playing "Pokmon Go,"according to SurveyMonkey Intelligence. Another estimate, published by Bloomberg, puts the game at over 30 million users"anumber most mobile games will never reach," Ahmad pointed out."Most mobile games will be lucky to retain 50% of their users after the first month. A game that is able to retain 50% of its users after one month is a game that is doing considerably better than the average game, and one that shows its doing well," he added.Point being: The decline in "Pokmon Go" users is normal, not indicative of a fad. If anything, the huge number of users one month in shows that the game has staying power.As Ahmad put it: "Some have noted that the decline in [users]shows the game is a fad, but it doesnt show that at all. Instead the decline is normal, and the decline is not as sharp as the average mobile game would be after one month."That's before launching in China, the largest mobile games market in the world, or South Korea (the fourth largest). The phenomenon may be over, but "Pokmon Go" continues to dominate as reigning king of the charts on both iPhone and Android.SEE ALSO:'Pokmon Go' still isn't available in the biggest mobile game market in the world ' here's whyJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: A restaurant's serving Pokemon burgers ' but there's a twist when you buy one
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