The Asian region is becoming the biggest growth driver of economic value in mobile/online games, with OTT messaging platforms also disrupting mobile game markets as Kakao Talk (KR), WeChat (CN) and Line (JP) take significant shares of top app store rankings in Asia, according to a new report from UK-based investment firm Digi-Capital.
Games also dominated mobile app usage and revenues in 2013, taking 32 per cent of 2013 total mobile app usage (iOS/Android, tablet/smartphone), 72 per cent of mobile app revenues and circa 40 per cent of mobile app downloads in 2013, notes Digi-Capital MD Tim Merel.
The report also reveals that mobile and Asia drove games M&A to a historic record US$5.6 billion in 2013, up by 29 per cent from 2012, with average M&A deal size growing 23 per cent from 2012 to US$63.8 million. Mobile also dominated M&A by transaction value (67 per cent) and volume (36 percent). Nine of the top 10 game M&A deals of 2013 had Asian buyers, compared to eight out of 10 in 2012. Thirteen out of 15 game initial public offerings from 2011 to 2013 were by Chinese, Japanese or Korean companies.
Merel also predicts that mobile games could drive total games software industry revenue to circa US$100 billion by 2017, with the mobile and online games sectors combined to take 60 per cent of games software market share.
