Reports

China's mobile gaming market - including both single-player and mobile online games – enjoyed stable sequential growth in Q4 2015, propelled by the ongoing shift in gamer focus from PC games to mobile games, but more modest year-on-year growth as the feature-phone-to-smartphone conversion of China's handset user base gradually nears completion and the mobile gaming market reaches heavier saturation. Total Q4 2015 mobile gaming revenues reached approximately RMB 12.78 billion (USD 2.0 billion), up approximately 8% QoQ and 52% YoY.

As revenue and user growth in China's domestic mobile gaming market transitioned from high to stable growth, the country's major mobile gaming firms continued to actively pursue overseas expansion initiatives. At least two of China's top mobile game publishers announced planned investments in western mobile gaming firms in Q4 2015.

While some of China's mobile gaming firms looked to foreign markets for expansion of their operations, many sought a return to China's capital markets in Q4, attracted by higher valuations on domestic stock exchanges. During the quarter, one NASDAQ/NYSE-listed Chinese mobile game publisher privatized, and two others announced the receipt of privatization proposals. In Q4, at least 8 other mobile gaming firms also opted to list shares on China's National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ) OTC-style agency share transfer system, as doing so now allows them to apply directly to the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges for listing, without seeking regulatory approval. In addition, at least one other Chinese mobile gaming operator back-door listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange during the quarter.

Investor interest in domestic mobile gaming assets remained strong, with at least 15 domestic mobile gaming M&A or venture financing deals announced in Q4 2015. As cross-media strategies leveraging popular intellectual properties for adaptation into games, movies, TV series, online literature, and other media continued to gain in popularity, an increasing number of the acquirers in these deals were from the film and TV production industry. However, the acquirers in at least half of the deals belonged to traditional industries, like building materials and chemicals manufacturing.

To help investors and game industry enterprises identify opportunities among China's mushrooming number of mobile game titles, developers, operators, and distribution channels, Marbridge has developed the Chinese Mobile Gaming Industry Matrix. The Q4 2015 edition of the Matrix provides details on over 420 leading mobile game companies and over 1,035 of the top games in Excel (read-only) format:

• Listing Status (public, to list, private)
• Location (city in which operator/developer is headquartered)
• Company Homepage URL
• Company Contact Phone Number
• Experience in Overseas Game Publishing (specific examples available for ~8% of companies)
• Games Operated/Developed (with top grossing games highlighted)
• Game Environment (Android, iOS, WP)
• Game Type
• Game Dates (expected release, beta test, commercial launch)
• Game Source (self-developed vs. licensed)
• Revenue Model (pay-to-play vs. in-game items)
• Game Operation Statistics (DAU, monthly revenue, cumulative downloads - as available)
• Game Homepage URL

The Chinese Mobile Gaming Industry Matrix also provides data on China's top 35 mobile app/game distribution platforms, including:

• Platform Operator Name
• Investment Received (available for ~35% of platforms)
• Number of Apps Hosted (available for ~35% of platforms; dates vary)
• User Base (available for ~70% of platforms; dates vary)
• Cumulative or Daily App Downloads (available for ~45% of platforms; dates vary)
• Revenue Share Ratio with Developers (available for ~65% of platforms)
• Business Model (available for ~25% of platforms)

In addition, the matrix provides a Q4 2015 summary of Chinese mobile gaming industry news covering:

• M&A and Internal Investment Deals (20 items)
• Partnerships (15 items)

The Chinese Mobile Gaming Industry Matrix is available either for one-off purchase or on a subscription basis with quarterly updates.