China’s enormous population is giving it spending power that will outstrip even consumers in the United States this year in certain sectors such as mobile gaming. Smartphone and tablet games should generate more than $5.5 billion through the end of 2015, according to a new report from Asia market-intelligence firm Niko Partners. That is a huge chunk of the $30 billion that people spend on mobile gaming worldwide, and it is also a 66 percent year-over-year increase from $3.3 billion in Chinese spending last year. And this makes China a bigger spender on mobile gaming than the United States. Obviously, that kind of money has to look enticing to game developers around the world, and that’s where Niko comes in with its full 2015 Chinese Mobile Gaming Report.
“We believe that games become popular because they fill a void for gamers,” Niko founder and managing partner Lisa Cosmas Hanson said in a statement provided to GamesBeat. “It is important to evaluate what voids there are in Chinese culture, and then match game development to those as well as to the gamer behavior and characteristics of a good mobile game in a popular genre.”