China’s mobile gaming revenue will exceed the U.S. market in 2015

Niko Partners, one of the leading research companies in the Asian games market intelligence segment recently released the 2015 Chinese Mobile Gaming Report which confirmed a growth curve in 2015. The report confirmed that China’s mobile gaming revenue in 2015 will be around $5.5 billion, which is a 66% increased when compared to $3.3 billion in 2014. The global mobile gaming market is estimated to be around $30 billion and China has now established itself to be the leader in mobile gaming revenue in 2015. China is expected to have over 420 million mobile gamers by the end of 2015.

The United States has dominated the mobile gaming revenue market in the past but based on 2015 predictions, China will bring in an extra $100 million. The report also highlighted the fact that the Chinese average revenue per player (ARPU) is estimated to be around $13.10, whereas the average revenue per U.S. player is around $27.27. Mainland Chinese nationals are extremely fond of using their smartphones to play social casino games, even though it is illegal for Chinese nationals to gamble in the country.

The Chinese mobile market is dominated by the Tencent, a Chinese provider that owns the popular WeChat app and has more than 50% of the market share. The Niko report also predicted that the Chinese mobile gaming revenue market will continue to grow at a rapid pace and bring in around $11.1 billion by 2019.

In a statement, Lisa Cosmas Hanson, Managing Partner and founder of Niko Partners said “We believe that games become popular because they fill a void for gamers. It is important to evaluate what voids there are in Chinese culture, and then match game development to those as well as to the gamer behavior and characteristics of a good mobile game in a popular genre. With that mobile game developers may find their way to the next big Chinese hit game, because hoping to make it big with an international title lobbed to a Chinese publisher for localization is not an effective path to success”.

The Niko report also covers other areas of China’s gaming market including rankings for different mobile games, the tablet game market, the scope of mobile social casino gaming, Chinese gamers preference and behavioural data and key factors that will be responsible for increasing and slowing down growth in the Chinese market till 2019.