China wins global top spot in iOS game revenue

Tencent announced investment in Finnish mobile gaming company Supercell Oy in June, 2016, spending $8.6 billion to acquire up to 84 percent of the latter's shares. [Photo/IC]

China has surpassed the US and Japan to become the new leader in the game category of the iOS app market in the latest quarter, according to a report released by US-based analytics firm -- App Annie on Tuesday.

It said with the iOS Games category taking home about 75 percent of all revenue, the country's leap to the top is attributed to explosive growth for locally developed massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

In the mid of April, statistics released by App Annie predicted that China would surpass other markets around the globe in the coming quarters this year, highlighting that the growth was driven "almost entirely by games".

The county's iOS revenue more than doubled in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to the company.

Another mobile market monitor -- Newzoo noted that China is set to reach a $10 billion mobile games market this year, saying Tencent and NetEase are by far the most dominant publishers in the nation.

According to Newzoo, NetEase ranked the top grossing publisher on domestic iOS game market this month while Tencent alone claimed about 45 percent of Chinese Android game revenues in May, publishing 23 of the top 100 titles.

Earlier this month, Tencent announced investment in Finnish mobile gaming company Supercell Oy, spending $8.6 billion to acquire up to 84 percent of the latter's shares, which is believed by the industry as a strategy to accelerate the globalization of the company.

In a recent exclusive interview with China Daily, Bertrand Schmitt, CEO and co-founder of App Annie, said China accounts for about 20 percent of the world's gross app store revenue and it is expected to take about 30 percent of total revenue by 2020.

The country's gross app store revenue totaled $8.7 billion in 2015 and will reach $30.9 billion in 2020, according to App Annie.