To Succeed in China, First Thing You Should Know is Chinese App Stores

Many western developers have been trying to get into Chinese mobile games market but few have succeeded. It’s a tough market but too big to ignore. This post is the first in an ongoing series in which we focus on Chinese mobile games market in terms of app stores, localization and users’ preferences etc. Today we are going to talk about Chinese app stores.

As you may have noticed that Google Play is forbidden in China. Instead, there are around 200 Android stores, of which 15 stores are the most important and around 30~50 stores are worth your attention and efforts to get your games published there.

Chinese Android stores can be divided into three categories. First, third-party app stores. These stores are the ones that you might be familiar with like app stores from Tencent, Baidu, 360 and many others. Second, mobile device manufacturers’ stores like Xiaomi, Huawei etc. Last, carrier stores. There are three main carrier operators in China, namely China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

Chinese iOS market is also more complicated than western market. We have Apple’s App Store and also have jail-breaking iOS app stores. Some publishers might launch the game in jail-breaking iOS app store first for beta testing , then release it in Apple’s App Store.

For a publisher in China, he has to maintain relationships with all of them mentioned above and deals with SDKs of each Android/jail-breaking iOS app store. Each Android/jail-breaking iOS app store has its own SDK which need to be integrated in the game before launch. For those who are not familiar with these SDKs integration, they might find it very complicated to get it done. In our previous interview with Quan Yu, Daum Kakao VP, he revealed that they spent around three months to integrate one Chinese leading app store’s SDK and spent another three months to integrate another SDK in the beginning. It seemed a little bit crazy but it was true. But for those who know how to do it, they might get it done within a day.

Next time, we are going to talk about mobile game size for your guidance to do business in China. If you would like to know more about Chinese mobile games market, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. 

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