China to overtake US in mobile gaming market

Screenshot shows the poster for Back to Bed, a 3D indie puzzle game for smartphone.[Photo/iTunes]

With estimated annual revenue of $7.7 billion in 2016, China will likely surpass the US to become the world's largest mobile gaming market, an industry white paper showed.

The 2015 Global Mobile Games Whitebook was released by Beijing-based Global Mobile Game Confederation (GMGC), market research firm Newzoo and the big data firm TalkingData on Friday.

Compared to US's $5.2 billion revenues, China's mobile gaming industry earned $4.4 billion last year, but the market is expected to surpass US's $7.3 billion in 2016, driven in part by an increase in smartphone users and a rise in the number of paying gamers as China becomes more affluent, GMGC said.

In 2014, the country had 383 million mobile gamers, and this number will increase to 475 million in the next three years. Mobile users who use gaming apps spend an average 35 minutes a day on these apps in February, 2015, according to the research report.

The global gaming revenue is expected to hit $30.1 billion in 2015, among which China will occupy about one fifth of the market share.

"The fastest growth in mobile games is happening in China and the Southeast Asian market," South China Morning Post reported Saturday, citing Peter Warman, co-founder and chief executive of Newzoo.