2016 China's overseas mobile application development report!

▌China's mobile Internet penetration rate is 20% higher than the world level

According to CNNIC and eMarketer data compiled by iResearch, by the end of 2015, mobile Internet users in China accounted for more than 90% of all Internet users, about 20 percentage points higher than the global average. As the proportion of easily converted people decreases, the growth rate of domestic mobile Internet users will slow down. There are 2.22 billion mobile Internet users worldwide, with a penetration rate of 69.2% as of 2015, and it is expected to continue to grow rapidly by 2020.

iResearch believes that the high penetration rate of mobile Internet users has led to rapid development of the mobile Internet market. Compared with the domestic average, the global average is in a stage of rapid development of mobile Internet users. The demographic dividend will bring greater development opportunities for overseas mobile applications.

▌ Global 4G revenue will exceed 3G in 2016

According to public information compiled by iResearch, global 4G revenue will exceed 3G this year, accounting for 49% of total mobile revenue. The growth in 4G revenue will offset a 21% decline in 2G revenue and a 19% decline in 3G revenue.

iResearch believes that the continuous expansion of 4G network service scope has promoted the development of the overall global mobile network service speed. The overseas mobile Internet development environment has been continuously improved, the potential user group has been rapidly expanded, and users' behavioral habits of using mobile Internet have gradually been formed, creating an important opportunity for Chinese mobile applications to go overseas.

▌Domestic mobile phones have a market share of over 30% overseas, led by Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi

Among the domestic mobile phone brands used by overseas users, Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi have a clear leading advantage, with brand coverage of 9.4%, 5.5% and 4.5% in overseas markets respectively. Domestic mobile phones have an overall overseas market share of over 30%.

iResearch believes that the active expansion of overseas markets by domestic mobile phones has brought opportunities for mobile applications to go global. Mobile phone official market applications pre-installed on new models or on existing models are important channels for domestic applications to go global, laying a good foundation for traffic entry and basic data support for subsequent application development.

▌R &D overseas has become the mainstream, accounting for more than 70%

According to statistics from the White Whale Research Institute, the current overseas companies are mainly engaged in technology research and development and services. There are 4,577 R&D companies, accounting for 73.2%. Service companies going overseas include developer services, agency distribution, channels and media, accounting for more than 30% (some companies have overlapping business types). iResearch believes that R&D and service industries have fewer geographical restrictions, and the development costs are mainly labor costs, which are relatively low and facilitate overseas promotion .

The product areas of overseas companies are mostly concentrated in mobile games and mobile applications, accounting for 58.1% and 23.6% respectively. Cross-border e-commerce only accounts for 9.7% due to the heavy overall layout of the industrial chain.

▌Most of the companies going overseas are small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurial enterprises

The overseas development of mobile Internet is relatively new. Currently, most overseas enterprises are small in scale, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, among which more than half have less than 50 employees. From the perspective of capital and financing development stage, entrepreneurial companies are the main ones, and companies that have raised funds before the B round account for 63.1%.

iResearch believes that with the rapid development of the overseas mobile Internet market, after the successful trial of Chinese overseas companies in the early stage, the secondary market has also begun to pay attention to the field of mobile overseas expansion, and the phenomenon of linkage between the primary and secondary markets has gradually emerged. In recent years, financing events in the mobile overseas industry have occurred frequently, and the promotion of capital has laid a decisive condition for overseas companies to quickly open up overseas markets.

▌Over 5,000 games and applications exported to overseas markets

my country's overseas mobile applications are mainly games and apps, which currently exceed 5,000. As for cross-border e-commerce applications, affected by the capital structure, market resources are mostly concentrated on giant e-commerce platforms. Compared with games and apps, the number of their products is relatively small.

iResearch believes that China's mobile application overseas expansion started with the application category, which has a longer development time and is relatively more mature; gaming mobile applications are less homogeneous with each other, and the same user can install multiple gaming apps. Therefore, there is relatively less pressure in the competition for traffic between gaming applications, and they have relatively more development opportunities.

▌Overseas Application Honor Roll

▌Strategy and role-playing games have strong traffic monetization capabilities

According to the data from the White Whale Research Institute sorted by iResearch, the game category with the largest number of downloads from March to May was casual games, with a cumulative new downloads of 102.962 million times, followed by action games and strategy games, with 70.070 million times and 66.178 million times respectively. According to the revenue statistics of game sub-categories, the games with the highest cumulative revenue from March to May were strategy games and role-playing games, with revenues of over 100 million US dollars, at US$261.387 million and US$197.038 million respectively.

iResearch believes that strategy games and role-playing games perform well in terms of downloads and revenue. Excellent strategy games can quickly realize traffic monetization; while casual, arcade and action games, although they have large downloads, have average revenue performance in stores. Therefore, these three types of games are suitable as traffic entrances to accumulate data resources and traffic resources for the later development of the platform.

▌Social and efficiency applications have high monetization efficiency

Based on the performance of application categories in Google Play, the category with the highest revenue in the store is social applications, with cumulative revenue of US$2.079 million from March to May; followed by efficiency applications, which reached US$1.7953 million. However, the revenue of application products in stores is generally lower, which is quite different from the revenue of game products.

iResearch believes that among mobile overseas applications, social applications have fewer types and lower download volumes, but higher revenues, and their AR PU values ​​are significantly ahead of other categories. It can be inferred that the overseas user groups of China's overseas social applications have good payment habits. At the same time, influenced by China's successful experience in overseas applications, most of the current overseas tool applications are still free to download and have a good user base, but weak monetization capabilities.

▌The strongest voice for making money

▌ App Store Rankings – Hong Kong

▌Product preferences in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are greatly influenced by the mainland

▌ App Store Rankings – Japan

Casual games are more popular among Japanese users

▌ App Store Rankings – India

▌Tool apps are popular among Indian users