Sales of mobile games in South Korea soared to a record high in the first half of the year amid the coronavirus pandemic that has confined more people to their homes, industry data showed Monday.

Combined sales of three app markets -- Google's Play Store for Android devices, Apple's App Store for iPhones, and ONE store -- stood at 2.83 trillion won ($2.37 billion) in the January-June period, up 1.3 times from a year earlier, according to the data by mobile big data platform IGAWorks.

The figure also represents the largest half-year tally on record.

Google Play racked up 2.25 trillion won in sales to account for 79.6 percent of the total, followed by homegrown integrated app store ONE store with 343.6 billion won (12.1 percent) and the App Store with 235.1 billion won (8.3 percent).

NCsoft Corp. had the biggest market share of 34.8 percent thanks to the popularity of its massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) -- "Lineage M" and "Lineage 2M."

Nexon Co. came next with 5.8 percent, trailed by Netmarble Corp. with 4.6 percent and Webzen Inc. with 3.8 percent.

Monthly active users of Android-based mobile games numbered 19.84 million in June, up about 4 percent from a year earlier.

Users in their 40s were the largest at 28.9 percent, followed by those in their 30s with 25 percent and those in their 20s with 18.8 percent, according to the data. (Yonhap)