Alibaba sees promise in the mobile space
Alibaba, China’s largest retail organization akin to eBay and Amazon, has announced that it plans to break into the world of mobile games. China has become one of the most promising markets for mobile gaming, partly due to the rapid growth of smartphone and tablet ownership. Alibaba has been seeing a major rise in the potential of the mobile space and is not keen to be left behind by its competitors.
Tencent and Alibaba may clash on mobile games
Alibaba is currently working to develop its own mobile gaming platform. This move likely comes as a response to Tencent’s efforts to make its gratuitously popular WeChat application into a gaming platform. Tencent currently boasts of the strongest presence in China’s mobile sector. The WeChat application has more than 570 million downloads and Tencent itself is behind many of the country’s most popular mobile games. Alibaba is keen to break into the mobile space more aggressively and break the monopoly that Tencent is building.
Developers may find Alibaba’s platform attractive
The organization is providing access to its mobile gaming platform to developers for free this year. This initiative aims to attract game developers to the platform and provide them with the resources they need to develop engaging mobile games that will be associated with Alibaba in the future. The revenue that these games produce will be split, with 70% of the revenue going to developers and 20% going to Alibaba. Approximately 10% of the revenue generated by these mobile games will be donated to rural education initiatives.
Games to be marketed and distributed through Taobao
Alibaba has also committed itself to fully supporting the mobile games that are developed for its platform. The organization will market and distribute these games through its Taobao e-commerce division, which boasts of 700 million users. This will provide developers with a great deal of exposure and help them reach a larger audience that they may not have had access to in the past.
