5 Predictions For The Chinese Mobile Market For 2012

Guest post written by Chris Shen

Chris Shen is vice president at The9, a China-based online gaming company.

Chris Shen: In China, smartphones everywhere.

The number of mobile phone users in China exceeded 940 million in September 2011, and more than half of new users chose 3G devices. All signs point to China as the next big mobile frontier, and mobile gaming will be a key component in this growth and bring in the lion?s share of revenue for the region.

This isn?t just a Chinese story. It is on the mind of every major mobile app developer from Brooklyn to Bangalore. I am seeing it first hand with our game network: The9 Mobile experienced a 500 percent spike in new games in just the past two months, with half of our 635 game titles coming from Western developers. Over the same two-month period, the number of The9 Game Zone players has more than doubled. The mobile games community is more than doubling every two months. Every two months. Yes, that?s a record pace. In light of historic growth cycle, here are some predictions to keep in mind for 2012:

• The number of smartphones in China will surpass 100 million.

As of now, there are around 50 million iOS, Android and Windows smartphones in the country. While China Unicom provides iPhones, China Mobile supports around 10 million iPhone users even without a contract with Apple. Feature phones have dominated in China because of their low price point and the appeal of prepay phones, according to a recent VisionMobile study. And now carriers are starting to offer prepaid smartphones as well. The drive for smartphones is alive and well in China and will continue to grow. This leads into my next prediction?

• All three telecom carriers in China will support iOS.

We can see the obvious demand in the number of Chinese mobile users who have sought out non-contract iPhones. I expect that in 2012, China Mobile and China Telecom will join China Unicom in signing official deals with Apple to make iPhones more widely available. In turn, this will boost sales for iOS apps in China.

• The Chinese game distribution market will continue to splinter and grow to over 100 unique channels.

Unlike the centralized Apple and Android app stores in the U.S., China?s marketplace is highly fragmented, with games being distributed by carriers, devices and third-party channels.The9 currently works with 43 channels, but this is just the beginning of a long-term era of app distribution in China.

• Android devices will become the smartphones of choice in China.

Gartner reported that Android took over more than half of the global smartphone market for this first time in Q3 2011 ? a number boosted by higher smartphone sales in China and Russia than in the rest of the world. While there are no firm numbers on Android smartphones in China, third-party Android app stores continue to crop up and manufacturers are building more local versions of Android devices that specifically target Chinese consumers. The iOS alternative is both gaining popularity and becoming more readily available

• In-game purchases will become one of the main forms of revenue for mobile games.

In China, 95 percent of PC online games already revolve around micro-transactions. I expect that a lot of this money will transfer over to in-game mobile purchases as the number of smartphones in China increases. This is great news for app developers as free-to-play finally makes its mark in mobile.

While there may be debate over when China will become the largest superpower in the world, there?s no doubt that its superpower status in mobile gaming will be confirmed by the end of 2012.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/01/03/5-predictions-for-the-chinese-mobile-market-for-2012/?feed=rss_home

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