Southeast Asia key market for China's smaller mobile game firms

As many as 48 Chinese mobile games entered the top 100 popular mobile games in Southeast Asia in 2021, raking about $980 million or 54 percent of the total revenue of the top 100, Yicai.com reported on Wednesday.

As bonus of network user traffic reached its peak in China's market, the overseas markets have been a key battlefield for Chinese mobile game providers. Liu Wuhua, CEO of Yangfan Chuhai, a service provider for Chinese internet firms' global expansion, said, the charm of overseas market lies in that it is a diversified region, not a monopoly of a large firm, which leaves space and chances for smaller firms.

Liu considered Southeast Asia as one of the overseas markets with most potential for Chinese game firms. Southeast Asia is not only a region seeing some of the world's fastest internet growth but is also the fourth largest internet game market in the world and it shares similar cultural background with Chinese market.

"In the domestic market of China, a few head firms generally consistently hold top positions of top 30 for either the download list or the revenue list. In contrast, 20 plus different firms can be found among the top 30 in the overseas markets," Liu said.

In the overseas market, a number of new games are rolled out every several months. In 2021, three games developed by Chinese firms entered the top 20 most downloaded mobile games in the Southeast Asia market.