Newzoo spoke about the mobile games market in India
On April 9, a post by Thomas Wijman, a consultant for the company, appeared on the Newzoo blog about the state of affairs in mobile gaming in India. Thomas believes that the largest state in South Asia is worth special attention today.
The number of users in India is very large
Over the past two years, the number of smartphone owners in the country has doubled. Already this year, 387 million residents will have these devices. If the market continues to grow at the same pace, 585 million Indians will have smartphones by 2020.
At the same time, it should be remembered that back in 2016, the country was ahead of the United States in terms of the number of smartphone users. Then it became the second country in the world by this indicator. More only in China.
The disadvantage of the market is that the share of modern smartphones* among the total fleet of devices in the country is very low. As of January 2018, it was 7.5%. For comparison, in China the share reaches 17.5%, and in South Korea — up to 60%.
*Modern devices mean those whose characteristics meet the following requirements: a dual—core processor, 2 GB of RAM, support for 4G, NFC, biometric identification (for example, fingerprint), release date – no earlier than 2014.
There are also a lot of mobile gamers in India, but the volume of the gaming market is modest
Along with the growing number of devices in the country, the number of gamers is also growing. In 2017, there were 222 million mobile players in India.
According to Thomas, Hindus are a very engaged audience. Almost every third gamer plays from five days a week. 40% of gamers spend at least six hours a week on games.
By the end of this year, Newzoo predicts that mobile games in the country will earn $ 1.1 billion. At the current average annual growth rate, taking into account a compound percentage of 49%, this figure could grow to $2.4 billion by 2020.
India is a world leader in terms of earnings growth in the mobile gaming industry today. And the average income per Android user in the country is growing no less rapidly. It has doubled in the last two years.
However, so far the ARPPU in the country is not only significantly lower than in Western countries, but also less ARPPU in other developing countries.
To demonstrate, the representative of Newzoo gives a strange but illustrative example. According to him, if players in India paid the same amount as in Indonesia, then by 2020 the market revenue could be $5.2 billion.
Advantages of working in the Indian market
CPI in India is 12 times cheaper than in the USA. Newzoo agrees that the result is not important for such a small amount of money, but they note that in 2016-2017 a number of key metrics showed a twofold increase.
Along with the accelerating sales growth of modern smartphones in recent months, due to the increasing popularity of Chinese brands such as Xiaomi and Vivo, the Indian market may be very interesting in the coming years.
Newzoo believes that it is not difficult to get to it now. Most of the population (at least in big cities) speaks English, local players are not as strong as in South Korea or Japan, and the market itself is not regulated by the state, as in China.
Cover photo: Frank Holleman
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