Another couple of years and the Chinese mobile games market may well overtake the American one in terms of earnings. The Newzoo company told in detail about the Chinese market in its latest research.
A country
According to the latest census, 1.347 billion people live in China. This makes the Celestial Empire the most populous country in the world. And now imagine that most of them will use smartphones in some two years. But even if we leave aside almost a quarter of the population who is over 50 years old, the figure turns out to be very solid.
Age segmentation of the Chinese population
Previously, reports on China kept flashing “the data is relevant only for urban areas.” They say that most of the country is still standing with a plough. However, now China’s urbanization is happening very quickly. If back in the early noughties, most people really lived in rural areas, then already in 2011, the number of urban residents in China equaled them in number. In the future, this allows us to say that today nothing prevents the penetration of mobile communications in the Middle Kingdom.
The number of rural and urban residents of China (1990 – 2011, in millions)
The Internet
The spread of the Internet also speaks about the validity of the statement about the rapid urbanization of the country. In June 2013, the number of Internet users in China amounted to 591 million people. This is 27 million more than at the end of 2012. For comparison, there are 254 million of them in the USA.
The leading countries in the number of Internet users
Moreover, these are not five-minute visits a couple of times a day, as at the dawn of the Internet era in other regions. The average time spent by Chinese people on the Internet is 20.5 hours a week.
Mobile market and mobile platform market
The fact that almost every Chinese person will have smartphones very soon can also be said, starting from the following number: the number of mobile subscribers in China in December 2013 amounted to 1.23 billion. Cellular phones always give way to smartphones over time.
417 million Chinese subscribers are 3G users. In total, about 500 million people use the mobile Internet.
Plus, the smartphone penetration rate in China is constantly growing. In the second quarter of last year, 90 million mobile “handsets” were sold. More than 85% of them were smartphones.
Dynamics of mobile phone sales in China (smartphones vs. regular cell phones)
In other words, non-smartphones are buying less and less every year.
Since affordable budget handsets are the driver of the smartphone market growth, it is clear that Android occupies a large part of the market. However, we are not talking about Google Play, which, like a number of other Google services, is banned in China (which, however, did not prevent it from grabbing a 5.6% share).
Android App Distribution Channels in China
Newzoo also named the main Chinese Android stores: 360 Mobile Assistant, Tencent MyApp, Wandoujia, UC AppStore, Gfan Market, The Baidu app store, AnZhi Market and Alibaba.
By the way, the fact that Apple smartphones are not so popular in China, compared to Android handsets, does not prevent the Chinese App Store from being in second place in the world in downloads and in third place in revenue.
Gamers
Every year, the Chinese Game Publishers Association (GPC), one of the tasks of which is to regulate the game industry in China, publishes a report on the state of the industry in the country. According to this report, there were 495 million gamers in China at the end of 2013. This is 20.7% more than a year earlier. Growth is good, but its pace is falling. In 2011, they were 71.1%.
The number of gamers in China (and their growth rate)
On this half billion, China earned $13.8 billion last year. This is 38% more than a year earlier. Moreover, games created in the Middle Kingdom earned $ 7.9 billion.
Client games earned the most – 64.5%. Mobile accounted for “only” 13.5%.
As for mobile gamers, the total GPC counted 310 million in China. This is 248.5% more than a year earlier. In 2013, mobile games generated $1.9 billion. This is 246% more than in 2012.
Niko Partners, in turn, counted more than 80 thousand mobile application developers in China, who release about 100 games a day.
Frank N. Magid Associates claims that 84% of the population plays games in China. There are also a lot of mobile gamers – 74%.
The games developed for Android bring the most money.
Mobile App Revenue Structure in China in Q3 2013
