May 8th - Lisa Hanson to present about the benefits of market research when forming a JV in China at the Ishimaru Law China JV Boot Camp in San Jose, CA

China represented 22% of global smart phone shipments in Q1 2012, according to analysis firm Canalys. Comparatively, the US represented 16%. This is a big boom for the Chinese market compared to Q1 2011. In China 2/3 of the smart phones ship with Android. In 2011 Niko conducted a survey of smart phone owners and learned that gaming is one of the two leading applications that dictate a smart phone purchase. This month Niko Partners is conducting a survey of gamers regarding their mobile gaming behavior, including their hardware and gaming usage. Mobile gaming is changing the world of online games and in China the surging popularity in smart phones and tablets is guiding gamers to diffuse their time gaming from PCs to include mobile devices as well. It is imperative to keep up with the trends in order to be a player in the market. Our China's Mobile Games Market report will be published in June. 

The Special 301 Report is a long and brutal document to get through, but the sections on China and the Southeast Asian countries Niko tracks are worth reading. Click on the link to get to the full document. Essentially USTR slams China for having 99% piracy in digital music, and a wide array of online sites where users can get pirated digital content of all sorts. China, Indonesia, and Thailand are on the Priority Watch List, while Philippines and Vietnam are on the Watch List. The other SEA countries we track (Singapore and Malaysia) are not on the Special 301 lists this year.  

An article on Game.People.com.cn says that we can expect China's mobile Internet market to grow 150% this year, propelled by mobile games. Once again we are reminded of the sudden burst in mobile game popularity in China thanks to the increase in penetration of smart phones. The People.com article mentions that 91 game companies have partnered with Japan's DeNA already, and that there is a lot of cross-border trade of mobile games and cooperation between international mobile game companies. This could open the door for more games from the West, but of course they are not as lucrative as PC online games. US game companies of all sorts should be aware of the changes in the mobile games landscape in China and how these may impact changes in the PC online games segment as well.