Chinese consumers spend a lot of time and money on mobile games, which attracts the attention of publishers of PC games and app stores. Perfect World Co., a Chinese game developer listed on Nasdaq, is for example one of them.
“Perfect World will release more games later this year to expand its presence, “Xiao Hong, general manager of the company, told China Daily.”Although the main products of the company are the PC games, it will closely monitor the mobile sector because of its promising prospects, “he added. Statistics cited in the paper indicate that consumers spend almost a third of their time on mobile devices to play games. More than 250 million were playing in the last quarter of 2012, and the growth is expected to reach a value of approximately $ 3.2 billion in 2015.
The same trend was noted in a study by Draftfcb, which said that mobile users in India and China usually use their phones to play games more than to make calls, and suggested there was an opening for brands. In addition, for developers such as Perfect World, the number of profits appears more attractive due to the increasing number of users willing to pay for gaming applications.
“Chinese players are more willing to buy mobile games than to buy PC games,” said Hang Guoqiang, director of the internet industrial park funded by China Mobile, noting that “the effectiveness of profit in PC games was about 1-2 %, while it was 7-30 % in mobile gaming.” He added that more than ¼ of players pay 5 to 10 Yuan per month for mobile games.
David Liu, CEO of gaming company RedAtoms Inc also noted that 80% of the best games in China offer in-app purchases. He thinks that the best business model for developers was games that are free, but that have premium services for payment.
This may not be the best for everyone, however, as Analysys International, a society of information on the Internet, reported that over 90% of the revenue generated by the platforms of distribution of professional games is coming from application sales to smartphone users.
With smartphones offering the best features of the game, more consumers are opting for the latter, and some estimate that the rate of smartphone penetration should be 55 % by the end of 2013.
Here is for example a funny advertisement for China mobile games:
You can also read this article about Chinese favorite mobile games, and this article about China’s mobile games market.
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