SHANGHAI, CHINA - The highly anticipated annual event ChinaJoy, or the 12th China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference takes place in Shanghai with participation from many international gaming companies as well as domestic ones.
Easou, China's fast growing mobile search platform sees huge potential for growth in China's fragmented mobile gaming market. The absence of a dominant game distribution platform like Apple's App Store or Google Play in China renders a wide open market. And the rapid penetration of cheap smartphones into China's less-developed areas, i.e. lower tier cities means there are more mobile gamers than ever.
In the first quarter of 2014 China had over 417 million mobile gamers, up from 385 million at the end of 2013, according to iiMedia Research Group. "Most of these gamers are not PC users," said Frank Wang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Easou. "Some of them will go to internet cafes to play online games occasionally, but most of them are mobile only gamers," he said at ChinaJoy 2014.
Because so many of the new online gamers are mobile only, developers have to find new channels to reach them. Social media is less influential for these users than it is in tier 1 and 2 cities. Although the vast majority of these gamers are on Android phones, Google Play is not available in China. Instead, there are over 20 app stores competing. This opens the door for smaller companies like Easou. Through its mobile search engine, Easou can provide traffic to game developers. Easou is also a game publisher, and works with developers to design and improve their games.
"As a traffic provider and game publisher, Easou can add value at all phases of the mobile game value chain," said Wang. "This also helps us to be more responsive to our gamers' needs and gives us an advantage over the competitions."