ABI Research has announced the results of study that found average iOS app sizes increased by 16% from March to September.

The iPad 3’s Retina display and Apple’s more liberal submission policy have caused the file sizes of leading iOS apps to grow substantially, especially in games. The latest data from ABI Research shows that the global average app size across all categories was 23 megabytes in September, 16% more than in March.

Notably the increase was much greater for games. The average size is 60MBs which is a six month increase of 42%.

Google Play’s average app size was about 6 MBs in September but games were larger at nearly 40MBs.

“Apple’s decision in March to increase the maximum size of 3G/4G-downloadable apps from 20MBs to 50MBs has clearly had an unleashing effect on developers, said senior analyst Aapo Markkanen. “Their games can now be more complex and graphically polished, while still being able to benefit from the instant gratification of cellular downloads. And second, Google’s move to start hosting files of up to 4GBs on Google Play has been similarly well-received among the developer community. Android’s old way of doing things was cumbersome for game developers and their customers alike, but there is evidence that this change, along with certain other improvements, is indeed making it a more credible gaming platform.”