Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and application developers all hope to change the dominance of Google Play.
produced|©Tanker (also known as deep dive insight)
Author|©Sheng Yuan
Edit|©Egg President
The global spread of the new crown epidemic has made remote office, social isolation, and travel restrictions and other epidemic prevention measures popular, and mobile phones have become the most connected people and the world. Important channel.
Data from mobile data and analysis company App Annie shows that in 2020, the average daily usage time of mobile phone users worldwide is as high as 4 hours and 20 minutes, an increase of 20% compared with last year. Mobile applications related to games, pan-entertainment, social networking and food delivery have exploded. The total usage time of mobile applications worldwide has increased by 25% year-on-year.
In the context of the rapid increase in global demand for smartphones and mobile applications, what is the current cooperation relationship between Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and mobile application developers that have started the process of going overseas around 2010? In 2021, what development trend will the two show? Can Chinese mobile phones become the third pole of Chinese apps going overseas? “Explore Tanker” and practitioners tried to find answers.
1. From the branch to the sea and the meeting
Before and after 2010, Chinese smartphones and Chinese mobile phone applications were like two rivers, splitting out and going to sea.
In 2009, OPPO entered the Thai market, which opened the curtain of Chinese smartphones entering overseas markets; at the end of 2010, Jiubang Digital launched the GO desktop, which quickly became popular overseas, and Chinese tool applications ushered in the golden age of going overseas.
At that time, the distribution channels for Chinese mobile apps to go overseas were mainly Google Play or App Store. “In 2013, the Google Play registration process was still very complicated, and it had to bundle credit cards, which made it difficult for many domestic developers to register accounts.” Wei Fangdan, founder and CEO of Moby-Dick, recalled to “Tanker Tanker”.
At that time, Wei Fangdan had not yet started a business and was still working in a company, but he used his spare time to research the method of “registering a Google Play account in 15 minutes” and developed overseas applications through Taobao. They sell it for 600 yuan per account. This part-time business allowed Wei Fangdan to earn 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a month, which shows the appeal of Google Play to domestic developers.
However, this situation has changed as Chinese mobile phone brands expand their overseas market share.
After ten years of hard work, Chinese mobile phones have occupied more than 60% of the market in Southeast Asia, India and Africa. According to a research report by Counterpoint Research, a foreign research organization, Chinese mobile phone brands have already captured 30% of the European market in 2019. The overseas sales of mobile phone brands such as OnePlus, Realme and Xiaomi have surpassed the domestic sales.
On November 24, Xiaomi announced its Q3 financial report. In the quarter, Xiaomi’s overseas market revenue reached 39.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52.1%, and overseas market revenue accounted for more than half for the first time , Reaching 55%. Xiaomi started to become a truly international company.
Recalling Xiaomi’s journey to Southeast Asia, in September 2017, the Xiaomi App Store was the first to go online in India; in the third quarter of 2019, Xiaomi’s overseas app store launched a new name “Get Apps”.
In April 2018, Huawei launched the Huawei App Store “App Gallery” for overseas users. In the same year, OPPO games were dominated by India and Indonesia, and expanded overseas game markets through software stores, game centers and browsers.
Chinese mobile phone and application developers who have gone to sea have finally started to meet.
2. Combination will benefit both
In fact, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have long been eyeing the big cake of “overseas application distribution”. According to statistics, in 2019, Google only earned US$8.8 billion in profits from the Google Play application store service, and the App Store created approximately US$15 billion in annual profits for Apple last year.
In sharp contrast, Chinese mobile phones are still in the stage of “selling products” overseas. Judging from Xiaomi’s Q3 quarterly financial report in 2020, Xiaomi’s global mobile phone sales growth rate was as high as 45%, but the growth rate of Internet service revenue was only 8%.
In this regard, people in the mobile phone industry told “Tanker Tanker” that the App Store is an Apple-led application ecosystem, and overseas Android phones need to pre-install a series of Google applications, including Google Play, at Google’s request. For the dominant application distribution environment, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers can therefore obtain limited Internet service revenue.
Therefore, China’s overseas applications also hope to borrow the overseas application market of China’s mobile phones to reduce traffic costs and improve monetization efficiency.
A business person who has been engaged in overseas App application market distribution for a long time revealed that Chinese mobile Internet companies that went overseas a few years ago tended to go to Facebook and Google to buy traffic, but later found that the effect was not obvious.
“Now that Chinese mobile phone applications go overseas, the preferred channel is to cooperate with Chinese mobile phone manufacturers.” Yaling, head of global business of Youmi Technology, told “Tanker Tanker” that the mobile phone itself has natural traffic and is a high-quality application user source.
At present, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are increasing their efforts to recruit overseas application developers. On the one hand, it provides a large number of distribution locations and introduces a policy of free testing by application developers to attract participating manufacturers in the construction of mobile application ecosystems. On the other hand, the cost of advertising or pre-installed traffic on overseas mobile application stores in China is also lower than that of Google Play and App Store. If the sharing model cooperates, developers can get a higher percentage of sharing.
“The overseas development of Chinese mobile phone brands has given domestic overseas application developers more choices. For the same application, if the ratio of share on Google Play and App store is 37%, Chinese mobile phone applications The store can even give a ratio of 28 or more.” Wei Fangdan said to “Tanker”.
It is understood that the cooperation policy of OPPO Game Center in 2019 is to give overseas game developers a 60%-70% turnover share, and also bear the corresponding taxes and payment channel fees.
3. Fight for the initiative
In addition to economic benefits, whether it is ChinaBoth mobile phone manufacturers and application developers hope to change the dominance of Google Play.
From the perspective of domestic developers, starting from 2015, Google has increased the supervision of Google Play, and the “golden age” of Chinese tool applications with “buying and selling” as the core business model has come to an end.
At the beginning of 2020, Google once again removed 600 applications, and many companies focusing on tool software development, including Cheetah Mobile, were hit hard again. In the current overseas distribution environment, being removed by Google basically means bidding farewell to the mainstream market.
From the perspective of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, after May 16, 2019, Huawei mobile phones cannot be pre-installed and use Google service GMS, which has seriously affected the user experience and sales of Huawei mobile phones overseas, and Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are more urgent Hope to reduce dependence on Google and enhance the voice of the industry.
For this reason, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are accelerating the expansion of the circle of friends and strengthening their application ecology.
In August 2019, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo jointly created the “Global Developer Service Alliance” (GDSA). All foreign software developers can put A On this platform for users to download, aiming to jointly launch an application store for software developers outside of China.
Huawei began to push Huawei HMS. On December 8, 2020, at the Huawei HMS Global Ecological Alliance Summit, Huawei announced that the number of monthly active users of HMS exceeded 500 million. Since HDC 2020 was held in mid-September, it has grown from 12 partners to nearly 100 member units. An alliance organization that helps partners expand their global business and ecology.
However, according to Xu Ming (a pseudonym), a senior overseas application developer, Chinese mobile phone manufacturers have only formally entered the overseas application market for three or four years and are still In the early exploration stage, the background is not the same as Google Play and App Store. The overseas application market of domestic manufacturers is not in the same order of magnitude as Google in terms of the number of developers or applications.
In 2020, the number of Huawei HMS applications is 96,000, and according to App Annie data, Google Play has more than 2.8 million applications in 2018.
At the same time, localization is also the biggest challenge to the construction of overseas ecology of Chinese mobile phones. Whether it is in the payment link, communication and negotiation with financial and payment institutions in various overseas markets, or to help developers understand local laws and regulations, customs, and avoid policies and public opinionRisk is a work that requires long-term investment.
“Google Play is not fighting alone. It has formed a synergy with other Google applications to form a complete system.” An overseas staff member of a Chinese mobile phone brand told “Tanker Tanker” that European and American users have basically accepted “Google “Family Bucket”, its position in the application market in Europe, America and other places is difficult to shake.
4. Three major variables in overseas markets in 2021
Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and overseas application developers and Google’s battle for the initiative is bound to be long-term. According to Tanker, China Whether mobile phones can become the third pole of overseas distribution of China’s mobile phone applications, in the coming 2021, may mainly depend on the three major variables of “demand, supply and geopolitics”.
Requirements:The raging COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is undoubtedly Greatly accelerate the development of the global digital economy. At the same time, with the accelerated construction of 5G communication network infrastructure, the global mobile phone market is expected to usher in rapid development next year.
IDC predicts that the global mobile phone market is expected to grow by 2.4% in the fourth quarter of this year and reach 4.4% in 2021. In particular, the price of 5G mobile phones will continue to drop. It is expected that in 2020, global 5G equipment will drop by an average of 25%, to US$611, or about RMB 4,010 (also in this process, the average price of 4G mobile phones will continue to fall).
The in-depth popularization of 4G and the scale effect of 5G mobile phones will inevitably give birth to a large number of new applications, and may even bring new distribution models under the 5G background to Chinese mobile phones And overseas applications bring opportunities for overtaking in curves.
Supply:Ami Technology’s globalization business expert Asia Ling revealed to Tanker that in the past, most of the customers served by Mi Services were developers with overseas experience. During cooperation, they will clearly inform the characteristics of the purchase traffic, but this year there are a large number of developers without overseas experienceFind the door to communicate and promote. “On the one hand, the domestic game version number management is strict, and a large number of game teams have begun to consider going overseas. On the other hand, businesses such as board games and Internet finance are in a state of restricted development in China. Companies with these backgrounds have turned to overseas.” Yaling said .
In addition to a large number of developers going to overseas markets, domestic mobile phone manufacturers are also continuing to increase their numbers to attract developers to join in order to grow their application ecology. Take Huawei HMS as an example. It is committed to providing support for product localization, local compliance and local promotion for co-developers. It also integrates platform, PC and IOT products into the HMS ecosystem, and works with developers to create more products. Comprehensively improve developers’ overseas earnings. Chinese mobile phone companies going overseas, such as Xiaomi and OPPO, have also launched a full range of services and measures to attract developers.
Geopolitics: Since June of this year, the Indian side has used “maintaining national security” as an excuse for four consecutive times to ban mobile applications with Chinese background. Up to now, the number of Chinese apps blocked by India has reached 220.
For the first time, geopolitical risks have been so directly placed in front of developers going overseas. Wei Fangdan believes that from the perspective of corporate operations, it is becoming easier for companies to go abroad, whether it is from information acquisition, talent recruitment, or the number of various types of service providers and investment institutions in the field. But new difficulties such as geopolitics must be guarded.
“This year, many companies have begun to lower or even cancel the budgets of the Indian market and transfer their budgets to the Southeast Asian market.” Yaling said that due to the TikTok ban in the United States, many developers are also reducing their dependence on the US market, but overall From a point of view, the risks of small applications in the US market are still manageable. And because the UP value of European and American users is higher than that of other overseas markets, it is still the main market for developers.
According to the statistics of Google Partners, in Q1-Q3 of 2020, the overseas revenue of Chinese mobile game and application developers accounted for 14% of the total global revenue. According to statistics, among the top 100 applications and games (App Store + Google Play) in the global revenue in 2019, China’s applications accounted for 38%. There is no doubt that Chinese developers have become a decisive force in global applications.
After ten years of hard work in the sea, Chinese mobile phone and Chinese application developers have grown from a trickle into two big rivers into the sea, and with the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), In the future, both will bring “new ocean currents” to the global market. And being Google PlaAfter y and the App Store have “monopolized” most of the application market, Chinese mobile phones are also expected to become the “third pole”, “plugging in new wings” for Chinese applications to go overseas.