While the United States has led the world in mobile gaming revenue for years, it looks like China could come in and steal the crown sometime next year. Mobile gaming has always been more popular in Asia than in the West for a number of reasons. Pair that with the fact that China has several times the population of the United States and has more people buying smartphones every year than any other country on the planet, and it’s no surprise that the country’s mobile gaming revenue is expected to reach nearly $8 billion by 2016.
Everybody knows that mobile gaming is big in China. How big? Big enough that, according to a white paper released today by GMGC, China will become the top global market for mobile games by 2016. Citing data from Newzoo Global Games Market Premium, the white paper estimates that mobile gaming revenues in 2015 will hit US$6.1 billion – just below the US’s projected revenues for this year at US$6.3 billion. But in 2016 China is expected to blow past the US for the first time ever, hitting US$7.7 billion in mobile gaming revenues and become the world’s top market for mobile games. Those are just projections, of course, but there’s plenty of reason to believe China’s mobile gaming market will continue to grow as smartphone penetration and 3G/4G subscription rates continue to rise. The white paper also points out China is particularly fertile ground for mobile games: Chinese phone users spend way more time per day (35 minutes) playing games than they do using any other kind of app. That also puts them well ahead of American mobile gamers, who spend just 11 minutes a day with their games on average. China’s day one and week one retention rates for users who’ve downloaded a new game are both slightly higher than the comparable rates in the US as well. In other words: Chinese gamers keep and play games for longer than their American peers.