4 issues that determine the success or failure of Google Play in China

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Google's return to China has taken another step forward. Google has set up servers in China for internal testing. The special version of the Google Play store uses a red design and does not include music, books and movie resources. Users can then purchase applications and games by binding UnionPay cards. However, due to some localization obstacles, the launch originally scheduled for the end of this year may be delayed until next year.

As Google Play is about to be launched in China, the industry will inevitably pay attention to whether Google can completely change the current domestic Android distribution market landscape. After all, Google Play adopts a 3:70 revenue sharing ratio, which is more beneficial to domestic publishers and CPs.

In the opinion of gamelook, there are four unresolved fatal problems in the success or failure of Google Play in China:

Question 1: Where do users come from? Do mobile phone manufacturers install Google Play or not?

An app store without a user base is meaningless no matter how big its background is. There are precedents in the Chinese market. Previously, Amazon China introduced the Amazon store to the Chinese market along with the launch of Kindle in China. Amazon also adopted a 3:7 profit sharing at the time, but because it did not have an effective user base, it quickly faded from the sight of domestic gaming industry professionals.

So how does Google ensure that it has a large volume? In fact, Google has been prepared for this. In 2007, Google established an organization called the Open Handset Alliance in order to successfully launch Android. Currently, the organization has more than 80 member companies, including China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. At the same time, mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, OPPO, and Haier have joined the organization.

Well-known mobile phone manufacturers in the alliance, such as Samsung, must sign a "Mobile Application Distribution Agreement" with Google when producing Android phones. The agreement stipulates that more than ten Google applications must be pre-installed on the device, Google Search must be set as the default search engine, Google Search and Google Play must appear on the home screen, and the operation of displaying other Google applications only requires one swipe of the screen.

From the above, this is an unfair clause, but it is understandable. The domestic mobile phone manufacturers who have joined the organization have accumulated a group of users in their app stores, but why should they give them up to Google? According to previous news reports, Google has adopted a strategy of subsidizing manufacturers at this stage, providing a pre-installation fee of $1 per mobile phone. However, compared with the income of mobile phone manufacturers operating their own app stores, the appeal of Google's pre-installation fee is very limited.

So what will happen if mobile phone manufacturers do not pre-install Google Play and take an attitude of non-cooperation with Google? The incident in 2012 when Google stopped the development of Alibaba Cloud OS mobile phones is worth referring to. There are three reasons why Google was angry with Alibaba Cloud OS: Alibaba modified Android and did not admit that it was Android; it was not fully compatible with Android applications, which might lead to the division of the Android camp; there were many pirated applications in the Alibaba Cloud App Store. To put it bluntly, it was "Alibaba did not listen to Google."

Gamelook believes that if Google's core interests are damaged after returning to China, Google will not rule out taking measures similar to the Alibaba Cloud OS incident to vigorously express its demands. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers will have to struggle for a while, because once a conflict comes with Google, it will not only be the Chinese market that will be affected, but also overseas markets.

Question 2: After Google Play enters China, will it compete with or cooperate with existing stores?

Foreigners have their own rules, and China has its own national conditions. If all mobile phone manufacturers install Google Play at Google's request, will Google be worry-free in the long run? No.

If Google puts itself in opposition to various domestic app stores, or is considered by them to be the biggest enemy, then what awaits Google will be a long and fierce street fighting in the app store field, and it will be beaten up by a group of Chinese companies.

In gamelook's opinion, Google's failure to sell its own brand of mobile phone hardware in China will lead to many passive situations. For example, mobile phone manufacturers can install the software, but once the mobile phone enters offline sales channels or even Internet channels, these sales agents can delete Google Play by "flashing the phone". The simplest way is for the manufacturer to first collect the Google Play pre-installation fee, and then give the money from Google to the agent in the form of promotion fees to let it eliminate Google Play, and then kick the responsibility to the user. This simple trick makes Google cry without tears.

Many European and American companies look down on the tricks of pre-installation and flashing in the hardware sales channels, but pre-installation has always been a basic and strategic task in the eyes of BAT. Whether it is down-to-earth will determine whether Google has the endurance to fight in the long run.

If Google is really determined to make Google Play the largest Android app store in China, GameLook believes that the truly effective long-term approach is to share revenue with major mobile phone manufacturers, such as Google taking 10%, mobile phone manufacturers taking 20%, and CP taking 70%. Perhaps in this way, Google will only make a profit in distribution, and the profits will go to mobile phone manufacturers, but Google can achieve profitability in the Chinese market through mobile search and mobile advertising. However, the side effect of doing so will lead to a large number of layoffs of channel personnel of mobile phone manufacturers.

Question 3: Why do Chinese users use Google Play instead of other stores?

According to Tencent's statistics, nearly 50% of Android users in China currently install two or more app stores at the same time, and it is not uncommon for multiple app stores to coexist on mobile phones. The first step for Google Play to return to China is to at least become a candidate for Android users to download apps, and then become the first choice.

To become the first choice, the app store has to compete with users on who understands the needs of users better. Compared with the relatively simple ecosystem of iOS and similar ecosystems in overseas markets, there are huge differences between the domestic Android market and overseas. Because there is no real moat between domestic channels, the store functions and operating methods have been pursued to the extreme. Although it cannot be said that the list presentation method of Google and Apple, which relies entirely on "algorithms + editors' recommendations", is bad, at least for the domestic Android market, the operating rules of such foreign app stores have lagged far behind the actual situation in the Chinese market.

Let me give you a few simple examples. For example, the media-based application recommendations, guides, reservations, red envelopes, lucky draws, free data downloads, social distribution, etc. that are very popular in domestic stores are not available in foreign countries. So will Google learn these operating methods that are very Chinese in nature or not?

At the same time, if Google does not follow some bad habits in the Chinese market, such as self-recharge and union rebate promotions, players will easily turn to other app stores due to price and welfare factors. If Google strictly abides by the operating routines of foreign Google Play, the Chinese version of Google Play will become the store with the worst user benefits in the domestic Android market.

The reason why many foreign Internet companies have repeatedly failed in the Chinese market is that after Chinese local Internet companies have entered a deep operation state in a certain business, various operating methods begin to diverge from the American-style Internet. As a global Internet company, whether Google will give the Chinese version of Google Play the right to adapt to local customs directly determines how long this store can survive.

Question 4: How to get good games and operate a developer community? Store automation may not be suitable for the Chinese Android market

For game developers and publishers, the current domestic Android market has a relatively low share ratio, so they will definitely welcome the launch of Google Play in China at the first opportunity. If Google can solve the problem of user volume, then the next challenge will be how to cooperate with Chinese developers.

Similarly, unlike the operating mechanisms of overseas app stores and Google Play, the operation of local Android application stores in China is more "human-governed" rather than "machine-governed." The presence of the "human" element of the channel is reflected in many aspects, such as the initial business contacts, visits, testing arrangements, ratings, online resource allocation, and subsequent operational resource allocation between game developers and application stores.

If Google adopts the same "black box" cooperation mechanism as the App Store in the Chinese market, and relies mainly on advertising and promotion for high rankings, and at the same time follows the trend of recommending resources to favor large-scale games from well-known developers, and even mainly recommends European and American games as in overseas markets, then it is foreseeable that the problem that Google Play will encounter in China is App Store-ization and de-China's Android ecosystem.

At this stage, although there are a number of large-scale game companies in China that can publish games independently, there are still a large number of small and medium-sized CPs in the market that have no money to buy advertisements and can only survive by relying on Android channel recommendations, especially in the fields of casual and board games. If Google cannot be down-to-earth, just look at the current situation of the App Store. In the future, it will lead to a further compression of the living space of casual mobile games, independent games, and board games in the Chinese market. Although "black box" automation is fair, it is unreasonable if fairness is based on the death of mobile game products that some users do have demand for and should exist.

In the opinion of gamelook, if Google Play wants to survive in China for a long time and be recognized by mobile phone manufacturers, and loved by developers and users, the most taboo thing is to talk to itself and directly copy the standards of Europe and the United States. It is true that the global ecosystem of Android was created by Google, but in the Chinese market, Google's presence in the mobile distribution market is still limited to the Android operating system.

In the five years since Google left China, China's mobile Internet is growing in ways that Google cannot understand. It is unrealistic for Google Play to play the role of a distribution market revolutionary in China. A more desirable approach is to first become a positive catalyst for improving the domestic Android market. A deep understanding of the Chinese market and a determination to change itself are the survival rules of Google Play.