The Top Ten Mobile Markets for App Promotion
At the start of 2017, several reports on the mobile games market in 2016 and predictions for its upcoming growth were released. The Allcorrect game localization presents its view of the most attractive mobile markets and the outlook for localizing games into the languages spoken in these countries.
We used Statista’s data as a basis for our own rating, as the most conservative on average of the well-known companies. We should also note that for several countries, data from other sources — such as Newzoo — can be radically different.
Statista provides data on 49 countries. The total value of mobile games for these countries was $27 billion.
When presenting research findings like this, countries are usually grouped by region (North America, Asia, Europe and so on), and then the value of the mobile games market is calculated by each region. However, we examined every country individually.
In addition, when compiling our rating, we endeavored to take into account expenditure for entering each market. To do so, we calculated the cost per install (CPI) for all users and deducted it from the total revenue in each specific country. This allowed us to calculate the marginal profit from that market (you can read more about the methodology here).
The 10 Largest Mobile Games Markets (According to Statista)
Comments:
- Data about total market value, ARPU and number of players comes from Statista.
- CPI statistics are taken from Chartboost (November, 2016) as the average for Android and iOS users by country and are standardized to 100% (discounting other platforms), with the exception of figures highlighted in green, which come from Geenapp (January, 2017).
- Statistics on the breakdown of mobile users by OS were published by StatCounter in November, 2016.
- The ARPU highlighted in blue is predicted to fall, while the rest will increase at different speeds.
Through our analysis we produced a rating of mobile markets by their attractiveness for developers. The rating encompasses 49 countries (link to our table); down to the 23rd position, the ratings for market value and profitability correspond, but they diverge from this point on. This happens when mobile gamers in a country have a low ARPU and a high CPI.
In this first article we will focus on the 10 most attractive markets for mobile developers and will discuss their particular features.
The top 10 countries generate 50–80% of mobile games sales. For an app to become popular in these markets requires localization into 15 languages. Localizing into Chinese requires using two written forms of the language. It is also advisable to account for differences between American and British English.
Interesting facts about these countries’ mobile markets:
- Apple tablets are the most popular in the majority of countries.
- BBM (BlackBerry) is widespread in Indonesia.
- Apps must be translated into 5 languages to become popular in India.
- To release on Android in China, it is advisable to distribute to 20 — or at least 10 — local Android app stores.
- China, German and South Korea have the strictest gaming laws.
- Indonesia has the largest Muslim population.
- Twitter is the most popular social network in Japan.
- In South Korea, hacking a game is punishable by a fine of up to $43,000 or up to 5 years in prison.
- As of 2015, there were 707 languages in Indonesia and 454 in India.
The commonly used acronym for localizing mobile games is EFIGS + CJK. The localization process begins with English, followed by French, Italian, German, and Spanish. These are in turn followed by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. However, it seems as if it is now time to rethink this list.
Localizing games into the languages spoken in the 10 countries with the best outlook allows you to access other markets as well; for example, Mexican Spanish is spoken by a percentage of US residents, and Bangladeshis speak Bengali. The countries and languages for localization are listed below:
- Chinese in Simplified and Traditional written form (982 million native speakers).
- USA — American English.
- India — English, Hindi (650 million native speakers, official state language), Telugu (over 89.7 million native speakers), Bengali (83 million native speakers in India, 215 million globally), Tamil (over 66 million native speakers, one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and Singapore), Kannada, spoken in Bangalore, India’s “Silicon Valley” (over 40.3 million native speakers).
- Japan — Japanese (127 million native speakers).
- South Korea — Korean (78 million native speakers).
- United Kingdom — British English.
- Mexico — Mexican Spanish (125 million native speakers).
- Indonesia — Indonesian (around 20 million use it in everyday life), Javanese (80–100 million speakers), Sundanese (over 27 million speakers).
- France — French (79 million native speakers).
- Germany — German (105 million native speakers).
Mark Twain wrote that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” We hope that, conversely, our alternative rating will help mobile games developers to get a better handle on the various markets and earn more money.
We will be happy to provide you with a consultation on localizing your games into a new language or answer any of your questions on localization at order@allcorrectgames.com.
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