China mobile games : 8 key facts and trends

1. Without a doubt, China is the biggest mobile games market in the world and is expected to continue until 2022

china mobile games revenue 2018 -2022 against us japan south korea taiwan v2

The annual growth rate in China over the next few years (14.2%) is still very high in comparison to the other top 4 markets.

Mobile games revenue in China is now more than 60% of the total video games revenue in 2018

mobile games revenue share in china against total video games revenue 2018

2. China has 2 times more gamers than the next four largest markets combined

Gamer population (in millions) and penetration in 2018 in China the us japan south korea taiwan

3. Nearly 70% of internet users in China watches online video games, more than any other countries in the world

Percentage of online population watches gaming video content in 2018 china taiwan us south korea japan

This has multiple implications from advertising, community building for new games etc.

4. Esports revenue in China exceeded $12B in 2018

esports revenue in china 2016 - 2018

I can’t find an unanimous definition of esports revenue across countries so I don’t include country comparison here.

5. Tencent enjoys more than 45% of the entire games market in China

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that given the Chinese market size, Tencent is also the number 1 gaming company in the world in terms of revenue

Top 10 Public Companies by Game Revenues H12018 worldwide

6. 2018 was a difficult year for China games companies because of the game license freeze

YoY H1 2018 Game Revenue Growth for Chinese Companies

Tencent growth was sharply lower while Netease went into negative growth territory.

7. Cost per install for mobile games in China is advantageous in comparison to the US, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea

mobile game app cost per install in japan china south korea us and taiwan oct 2018

8. Chinese Games companies have been spending more than $15B to acquire foreign games companies since 2011

Data is from a very good report “China’s Digital Game Sector” from US China Economic and Security Review Commission. The top deals are below with the biggest so far is the Supercell acquisition from Tencent

major foreign game companies acquired by chinese companies from 2011

This post is part of a series about China that I have been writing in 2019. You can find more of them below:

China luxury product marketing: key facts and trends

China OTT subscription landscape: 8 key facts and trend

China influencer marketing – 8 key facts you need to know

China (the largest retail market in the world): key facts and trends

8 Key facts about china advertising landscape

9 key facts about China digital landscape

That’s all from me. Hope you enjoy the post and feel free to drop your comments below.

Cheers,
Chandler

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.