Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing mobile markets prefer Google’s platform for game downloads.
Research firm App Annie says Android’s platform has a huge lead over Apple’s in Southeast Asia, with Google Play beating the App Store in downloads four times over thanks to the larger install base of Android phones there. The firm says that Games is the highest-ranking app category in Southeast Asia across both platforms, and that the category is showing explosive growth, jumping up 45 percent year-over-year. Its latest report, which focuses on Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, says that the region could be the next frontier in a mobile game market that could hit $30 billion this year, according to research firm NewZoo.
But iOS holds the lead when it comes to monetization, showing that it brought in 1.3 times as much as Google for the five markets in 2014. Of the five, Malaysia was the only country where Google Play’s revenues came out on top.
While downloads averaged four times higher numbers over the App Store, the largest difference was in Indonesia, where Google Play saw nine times the downloads. Total downloads for the region are up 50 percent and are three times of those of South Korea, one of the world’s largest markets. App Annie’s report says that Indonesia’s downloads alone were approximately 90 percent of South Korea’s in December 2014. Vietnam had the highest growth rate, increasing 95 percent over last year. The report credits increasing smartphone penetration in the region, saying that this opened up affordable, accessible gaming for these new mobile users. Android’s significant lead for downloads in Southeast Asia comes from advantages in distribution and pricing in the region, says App Annie.
Revenues are up for mobile gaming, showing even more growth than downloads for the region, nearly doubling last year’s numbers. App Annie says that Vietnam and Malaysia showed the highest growth rates at 150 percent and 115 percent, respectively. But revenues still need some time to grow, it seems. Despite the rapid increase of downloads in the region, the revenue generated in the five emerging Southeast Asian countries barely exceeded 25 percent of South Korea’s game revenue. And while mobile gaming counted for over 90 percent of South Korea’s total app store revenues, Southeast Asian markets showed closer to 50 percent in the same period.