Chinese mobile game firms witness overseas business expansion

China’s mobile game makers witnessed immense growth in overseas markets in the first half of this year with a steady surge in gamers online, an industry report showed Monday.

During the half year period, revenue for mobile games on the iOS App Store and Google Play in overseas markets reached about 2.6 billion U.S. dollars during this period, up more than 40 percent year on year as more and more domestic mobile game makers begin to venture overseas to woo international players, according to a report released by global app market data provider App Annie.

As per the report, in comparison spending on mobile games via the iOS App Store in China rose up 2 percent only in the first six months.

Overseas market expansion has become a part of Chinese mobile game makers’ expansion strategy as international markets have more impressive business growth potential, said Zhang Guowei, head of new business of the Greater China region with App Annie.

Chinese mobile games makers saw most of their game downloads made by players in emerging countries such as Indonesia and Brazil while players in mature markets like Japan and Germany were major revenue contributors, the report showed.

Among the users, the United States became the highest users both in downloads of Chinese mobile games as well as revenue contribution.

Among the top 10 markets by downloads of Chinese mobile games, India ranked among the top downloaders at 89 percent year on year while the Republic of Korea became the fastest revenue contributor for Chinese mobile game distributors among the top 10 markets by consumer spending of Chinese mobile games.

A total of 234 Chinese mobile games saw their all-time income from overseas markets exceed one million U.S. dollars in H1, up from 215 in H2 2017, the report showed.