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.
Market research organization IDC reported that in Q4 2015 Chinese market smartphone shipments reached 117.3 million units, up 8% YoY. The November 11 (Double Eleven) Internet shopping festival and Huawei's great performance in Q4 were the main drivers for this growth. The top 5 smartphone vendors by overall market share in 2015 were Xiaomi (15%), Huawei (14.5%), Apple (13.4%), OPPO (8.1%) and vivo (8.1%). Huawei was the #1 vendor in Q4, which accounted for 15.2% of total market shipments with a 50.8% YoY growth.
Apple Pay will launch in China February 18th. There are currently 19 banks that support Apple Pay in China. China is the 5th country to support Apple Pay. Apple said that Apple Pay will be launched in Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain later.
In a new move to further limit foreign companies' presence in China (and their joint ventures), a new regulation will take place next month called the "Regulation for the Management of Online Publishing Services." It will affect the publication of creative works including video games, animation, comics, audio recordings and video recordings. With this new regulation, foreign companies and their joint ventures will not be allowed to directly publish any creative works on the mainland and must seek approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television for any published work. Local governments will also be enabled to more tightly monitor and restrict domestic online publishers.
According to data from Steam Spy, since Steam launched support for the RMB, the number of Chinese users on Steam reached to 4% of total number of Steam users. Now China has 6 million activated accounts on Steam.
Steam is one method of distributing games digitally with digital rights management (DRM) as a way to combat piracy, a critical issue in emerging markets including China.
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.
