Tag: tencent mobile games

Tencent gears up to take over a massive mobile games marketplace

The tech giant from China is taking aim at gamers and doesn’t plan to slow down any time soon.

Tencent Holdings Ltd. has already grabbed hold of the top spot when it comes to being the leader in the mobile games category in China, but now it is stepping outside its home borders and is aiming to lead the way throughout other marketplaces, as well.

The company intends to start exporting games made in China into the United States and other markets.

In order to accomplish this goal, Tencent is working with San Francisco mobile games publisher, Glu Mobile Inc. Back in April, Tencent purchased a considerable stake in that company and they will now be working together to bring “WeFire”, Tencent’s most successful shooting game app, into the United States as well as other Western countries in 2016. Another one of its games – though the name has not yet been revealed – will be taken into the Japanese market next year by way of Aiming Inc., a local mobile game publisher.

Should Tencent be successful in taking its mobile games into other countries, this could change the entire marketplace.

Tencent - Mobile GamesThis will also provide Tencent with a powerful new avenue of growth as the current global mobile gaming marketplace is currently expected to grow to about $30.1 billion this year. That would mean that the figure would nearly have doubled since 2013, when it had been $17.6 billion. This, according to Newzoo research firm statistics.

The WeFire game app from Tencent is currently the most successful shooting game in China. Now it will be brought to the U.S. and other countries in order to go up against the top games in those markets. When a top grossing game reaches a leading spot in a specific market, it can bring in over $1 billion in revenue. However, when it becomes a global sensation, that figure can rise to $3 billion or even $4 billion, said the chief exec of the Kabam Inc. U.S. mobile game company, Kevin Chou.

That company intends to step into the mobile games market in China, next year. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, a massive rival to Tencent, has a minority stake in Kabam.

Mobile games are behind profit boost at Tencent

The company has reported that it has experienced a net profit increase of 32 percent during Q3.

Tencent Holdings Ltd has released its third quarter data and within it was a report that mobile games were a considerable driver of the 32 percent increase in net profits that occurred during that span of three months.

The reason these specific mobile apps received this credit is because of the growth and advertising they showed.

This underscored the resilience of Tencent despite the fact that the economy in its home country, China, has been slowing down. The powerful results played an integral role in assuaging some of the worries that had been expressed about the ever rising competition within the mobile games marketplace in the country. A spike in advertising revenue during that same quarter also looked promising to investors who were looking directly at mobile ads as an area in which Tencent had room for growth into the future.

More than half of the revenue that Tencent managed to bring in during Q3 was from mobile games.

 Mobile Games Profit Tencent is the largest social network in China as well as its biggest online games company. From the three months that closed on September 30, the net profit increased by $1.17 billion from having increased by $888.89 million during the same quarter the year before. Revenue for that quarter increased by 34 percent to 4.18 billion.

That occurred even though economic growth as a whole has been slowing down. Earlier in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping cautioned that the economy in the country was facing both global and domestic uncertainty. The president indicated that Beijing was able to withstand growth that was as low as 6.5 percent.

According to analysts, the economic fluctuations don’t usually cause too much of an impact on the demand by online gamers. Since Tencent has placed a considerable focus on mobile games, it means that it has become a company that is not as vulnerable to the directions of the economy as its competition. Tencent explained that the smartphone game app revenue it earned was $832.34 million, which was 60 percent higher than it had been in 2014. It was also 11 percent higher than it was during the second quarter.