Among the top 100 mobile games in the Korean market, Chinese manufacturers have 36 products, accounting for nearly 30% of the revenue.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “SensorTower” ( ID: SensorTower), author Nan Lu, strategic analyst.
The latest data from Sensor Tower Store Intelligence shows that in Q4 2019, the revenue of Korean mobile game products was basically the same as that of Q3, but China ’s mobile game revenue reached a record high again. Among the top 100 mobile games in the Korean market, Chinese manufacturers have 36 products, accounting for nearly 30% of the revenue. The detailed data is as follows.
Korean mobile game market trends
In Q4 2019, the total revenue of the South Korean mobile game market in the App Store and Google Play was US $ 1.008 billion, an increase of 15.9% year-on-year and a 10.7% month-on-month decrease. However, head product income has remained largely stable. Revenue TOP100 mobile games totaled $ 810 million in the App Store and Google Play, which was the same as Q3 and up 17.4% compared to Q4 2018. It reflects the dominance of head products on the market.
Chinese mobile games that have entered the Korean market with a TOP100 revenue attracted nearly 240 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 47.2% year-on-year, and an increase of 18.5% from the previous month. Although the number fell to 36 models, the revenue share reached 29.4%, showing that domestic mobile games The South Korean market is more active.
Composition of Korean mobile game market
As can be seen from the figure below, RPG mobile game revenue still maintains an absolute advantage in the Korean market, and in Q4 mobile game revenue,It accounted for 64.3%, but the growth rate was significantly slower than the previous quarter. Although Q4 has new works such as “Paradise 2M”, “V4”, “Moonlight Carver” (달빛 조각사), but the decline of old products such as “Paradise M”, “Sword Spirit”, “Paradise 2: Rebirth” offset the new Growth brought by tourism. It can be seen that the market share of South Korean RPG mobile games has peaked in the short term.
Of all categories, strategic mobile games are the only type that maintains rapid growth. Q4 revenue reached US $ 158 million, an increase of 22.5% over Q3, and the increase basically came from Lilith’s The Awakening of All Nations.
Description: Since most mobile games are classified into two categories at the same time on the iOS platform, the total revenue and total downloads by game category are slightly higher than the actual data.
In terms of downloads, the overall downloads of the Korean mobile game market in Q4 decreased by 5.3% compared to Q3. Among them, the decline in action mobile games was the most obvious, mainly because mobile games such as “aquapark.io” and “Mario Racing Tour” concentrated their efforts in Q3, while Q4 action commercials were only listed on “Call of Duty Mobile Games”.
Puzzle puzzles have risen against the market. The increase mainly comes from Minimonster’s “I Love Puzzle Model”, “Rescue Cut”, Kerun’s “Word Spelling” (워드 퍼즐), and so on. The increase in downloads of educational games mainly comes from Fengyan Technology’s “Brain Hole Master”. It shows that Chinese mobile games are penetrating the Korean market with more categories.
A popular mobile game in the Korean market
South Korea ’s mobile game bestseller has been monopolized by local RPGs. However, domestic mobile games are changing this pattern. Since Lilith’s “Awakening of All Nations” has been launched in South Korea in September last year, her daily ranking has been basically ranked in the top 4 of mobile game bestsellers. Became the first Chinese mobile game to squeeze into the third best-selling quarter. In TOP20 income, there are 6 Chinese mobile games, one more than Q3.
In terms of downloads, domestic mobile games have won the top two, namely “Brain Hole Master” and “Call of Duty Mobile Games”. The top-ranked “Brain Hole Master” Q4 has been downloaded more than 4.6 million times in South Korea, significantly surpassing other mobile games in the same period; it has become the second most downloaded mobile game in the Korean market in recent quarters, only after “PUBG MOBILE” in Q2 2018 5.63 million downloads. In the download list TOP20, Chinese mobile games reached 8 models, an increase of 2 models from the previous quarter, and it is the country with the largest number of output games.
Chinese mobile games in South Korea
Specifically, in terms of Chinese mobile games, Q4 has 5 new titles in the TOP20 income list, including 4399 “Miracle Sword”, Heart Network “Endless Ural”, EFUN “EATER”, and shell wood game “Age of Z “, Perfect World” Perfect World Mobile Games “. In the first half of the list, only the heart-warming network “Endless Uralla” landed in the Korean market in the general English version, and the other 9 mobile games all launched deep localized Korean versions.
On the download list, there are 7 new products in Top20 mobile games, which is less than Q3 (13 models). The main reason is that products released in Q3, such as “Brain Hole Master”, “Awakening of All Nations”, “Word Spelling”, “Penguin Island”, “Sword of Miracles”, etc., have achieved better business results in this issue, and further boost Finalist threshold.
Looking at this report, we find that in terms of revenue or downloads, Chinese mobile game products represented by Lilith’s “The Awakening of All Nations” and Fengyan Technology “Brain Hole Master” are further penetrating the Korean head. market. Although the “Paradise” series is still the highest paid mobile game in the Korean market, under the impact of foreign products, the monopoly of local RPG masterpieces is gradually weakened.