Study of the App Annie of the Japanese application market: it's hard to break through, but you can't ignore
Japan, which has long been called the “Galapagos Islands” of the mobile industry for an abundance of complex and unusual phones, finally seriously decided to switch to Android and iOS. Considering the country's historically high level of spending on mobile apps and games, the country has become a market that Android and iOS developers cannot ignore.
For example, last autumn, Japan surpassed the United States as the most profitable market for Google Play.
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App Annie, a mobile application research firm, has analyzed the Japanese market . Ironically, Japan’s transition to smartphones has been rather slow, considering how many advanced mobile phones have been released over the past decade. By the end of 2011, only 23% of the devices used in the country were smartphones.
This is due to the fact that mobile operators like NTT DoCoMo, Softbank and KDDI are extremely influential. They, like their colleagues in the rest of the world, are historically the sort of gateway for content - they provide billing and get a share (often, not as much as 30% of Apple) from sales made from smartphones. This allowed gaming companies operating in a freemium model, like GREE and DeNA, to grow into a multi-billion dollar business long before western companies.
Like the rest of the world, the iPhone threatens the power of mobile operators. NTT DoCoMo does not cooperate with Apple. The operator can not control the distribution of content through the iTunes store, which brings a serious income to the company. Instead, it focuses on Android, and promotes its own stores — the so-called “dmenu”, portals for distributing Internet content, and “dmarket”, a store selling videos, music, books, and apps.
At the same time, KDDI and Softbank offer iPhones, and as a result attract new subscribers, taking them from DoCoMo.
As a result of this situation, two thirds of Japanese smartphones work on Android, and the remaining third on iOS. But despite this, the Apple app store bypasses Google Play by revenue. However, as in other markets, this gap is narrowing.
In addition, it should be noted that the Japanese market is incredibly difficult to break through. It is dominated by five publishers, receiving about a third of all revenue (and all of these publishers are Japanese). The success that local game developers have had in the era of ordinary mobile phones has accompanied them in the era of smartphones. Japanese companies are confidently leading in local rankings in terms of revenue. The only exception is NHN, which is developing Line - a popular messaging application, the French Gameloft and Apple.
The gaming market dominates in terms of revenue, which is not surprising. A similar situation can be observed in other countries. Games are also the dominant category of income in the United States, but they bring only 59% of all revenues.
Despite the fact that social networks are usually the second category after the games, as regards the time spent in them, in Japan, Facebook is not the first application in terms of revenue. This title belongs to Line, who recently overcame the 100-million mark of the number of users, and earned the sale of "stickers" - emoticons for the chat. In total, social network profits grew by 383% from January to September last year.
In any case, it is difficult to predict the size of Facebook's local revenues, since the company's revenue depends on advertising. Given that Apple does not include advertising revenues in its reports, it’s difficult for an outside observer to even estimate their monthly incomes and compare them with other popular applications.
PS (from translator) : as a supplement - on our website there is a presentation of Nikita Lyubimov’s (Will Ark) speech on the Japanese mobile gaming market.
For example, last autumn, Japan surpassed the United States as the most profitable market for Google Play.
')
App Annie, a mobile application research firm, has analyzed the Japanese market . Ironically, Japan’s transition to smartphones has been rather slow, considering how many advanced mobile phones have been released over the past decade. By the end of 2011, only 23% of the devices used in the country were smartphones.
This is due to the fact that mobile operators like NTT DoCoMo, Softbank and KDDI are extremely influential. They, like their colleagues in the rest of the world, are historically the sort of gateway for content - they provide billing and get a share (often, not as much as 30% of Apple) from sales made from smartphones. This allowed gaming companies operating in a freemium model, like GREE and DeNA, to grow into a multi-billion dollar business long before western companies.
Like the rest of the world, the iPhone threatens the power of mobile operators. NTT DoCoMo does not cooperate with Apple. The operator can not control the distribution of content through the iTunes store, which brings a serious income to the company. Instead, it focuses on Android, and promotes its own stores — the so-called “dmenu”, portals for distributing Internet content, and “dmarket”, a store selling videos, music, books, and apps.
At the same time, KDDI and Softbank offer iPhones, and as a result attract new subscribers, taking them from DoCoMo.
As a result of this situation, two thirds of Japanese smartphones work on Android, and the remaining third on iOS. But despite this, the Apple app store bypasses Google Play by revenue. However, as in other markets, this gap is narrowing.
In addition, it should be noted that the Japanese market is incredibly difficult to break through. It is dominated by five publishers, receiving about a third of all revenue (and all of these publishers are Japanese). The success that local game developers have had in the era of ordinary mobile phones has accompanied them in the era of smartphones. Japanese companies are confidently leading in local rankings in terms of revenue. The only exception is NHN, which is developing Line - a popular messaging application, the French Gameloft and Apple.
The gaming market dominates in terms of revenue, which is not surprising. A similar situation can be observed in other countries. Games are also the dominant category of income in the United States, but they bring only 59% of all revenues.
Despite the fact that social networks are usually the second category after the games, as regards the time spent in them, in Japan, Facebook is not the first application in terms of revenue. This title belongs to Line, who recently overcame the 100-million mark of the number of users, and earned the sale of "stickers" - emoticons for the chat. In total, social network profits grew by 383% from January to September last year.
In any case, it is difficult to predict the size of Facebook's local revenues, since the company's revenue depends on advertising. Given that Apple does not include advertising revenues in its reports, it’s difficult for an outside observer to even estimate their monthly incomes and compare them with other popular applications.
PS (from translator) : as a supplement - on our website there is a presentation of Nikita Lyubimov’s (Will Ark) speech on the Japanese mobile gaming market.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/167521/
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