Everything you need to know this week about the games market in Asia
Every week, our analysts review dozens of news sources, from multiple countries, in multiple languages. From this, we give you the stories that are most important, and the analysis to tell you why.
Fatfish is a publicly traded venture investment firm in Australia and the company plans to spin-off its SEA mobile games assets vai the listing of iCandy Interactive Ltd (proposed code ASX: ICI). The company hopes to raise funds to purchase moile game studios and develop existing mobile game assets that have an active pipeline of cash generating games. iCandy distributes F2P games that generate revenues via IAP of virtual items. Another investment activity in SEA recently was when King Digital (owner of Candy Crush) acquired Singapore-based Nonstop Games for US$64 million.
iiMedia Research published the Q2 2015 China Smartphone Market Report. The report shows that in Q2 2015 China's smartphone market sales reached 98.9 million units. Android users account for 85.2% while iOS users account for 11.2%. In terms of sales, Xiaomi, Huawei and Apple are the top 3 brands for smartphones, accounting for 16.6%, 15.9% and 11.2% respectively. Vivo and OPPO had rapid growth during this quarter. As of Q2 2015, the number of China's smartphone users exceeded 600 million - reaching 601 million, increased by 1.52% QoQ. Niko Partners will publish our Chinese Mobile Gaming Report 2015 next week - so please watch for that in order to learn about the mobile games market in relations to these 600 million smartphone users
Canadian mobile messaging App Kik Message announced that Tencent invested $50 million in Kik. The investment values the company with at more than $1 billion. Kik is very popular among North American teenagers. The company has claimed publicly that they desire to learn and build success based on that of WeChat. Ironically, Kik was launched before WeChat, and some say that WeChat initially might have modeled parts of its service offering on that of Kik.
Speaking of WeChat, HSBC estimated that the messaging app (with so much more!) is now valued at $83.6 billion, or half of Tencent's $165 billion (!) market cap. Watch for our upcoming blog post on all of the features and functions that make WeChat great in China (it is known also as Weixin in China) - and then we can all hope that those features extend worldwide so we all can use them too.
Niko News is just one part of the strategy and expertise offered by Niko Partners to help our clients better understand and successfully navigate the thriving games markets of China and Southeast Asia.
Niko Partners is the leading provider of market intelligence, custom research, and consulting services focused on the games industries in China and Southeast Asia. Since 2003 we have provided critical information to the world's leading game publishers, developers, hardware makers, and game service providers as well as to government policymakers, trade associations, and institutional investors.
