The prospects of the mobile games market in Southeast Asia

The market of games in Southeast Asia over the past years has attracted the attention of analysts, experts and the developers themselves. In this article we will try to tell you why.


Southeast Asia is a macro-region covering the continental and island territories between China, India and Australia. It includes 11 countries: on the continental part are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and on the island - Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines.

As a mobile gaming market, there are usually 6 countries that account for 97% of revenue: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
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When analyzing information about these countries, we are faced with the fact that the divergence of data on the mobile gaming markets of Southeast Asia in different sources is quite significant. This concerns the assessment of both the number of users of mobile games and the market profitability.

Below is the rating of South-East Asia countries according to Statista:


And according to the Newzoo version:


Read more about our rating methodology here .

However, analysts agree on one thing: Indonesia ’s largest mobile gaming market. The Android system dominates this region, most people access the Internet from a smartphone and spend a lot of time on social networks.

The most popular game genres in these countries are Strategy and RPG. Among the players of mobile games in these countries, Asian (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) and European developers are equally popular.

Features of smartphone users in these countries:


Interesting Facts:

• BBM from Blackberry is distributed in Indonesia, Zalo in Vietnam, and Line in Thailand.
• In Malaysia, Singapore and the Republic of the Philippines, one of the official languages ​​is English.
• In 2015, the Philippines was named the global center for social networking.
• One of the reasons for the constant interruptions in the wired Internet in Malaysia are sharks, which regularly snack on fiber-optic cables laid across the seabed.
• Since 2017, the practice of remittances via Facebook and Twitter has been introduced in Singapore. Now for payment it is enough to create an account in known social networks, link an account to it and indicate your ID when transferring funds.
• In the Republic of the Philippines there are 2 state languages ​​and 19 regional. According to these indicators, the country is only slightly inferior to India .

In addition to rapid growth, the mobile games market in Southeast Asia is attractive due to the relative ease of entry: there are no such strict laws as in China or South Korea. In Indonesia and Malaysia there are restrictions imposed by the norms of Islam, but we are not aware of any violations of these norms and the subsequent sanctions for mobile developers. In addition, for the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, English may be sufficient.

Below is a list of languages ​​for localization and brief information on them:


So, how can Southeast Asia be interesting to game developers:

• The fastest growing regional market.
• Active use of smartphones by the public.
• The lack of significant legislative barriers compared to other Asian markets.
• For access to all countries for the game enough localization for 3-4 languages.
• Games of Asian and European developers to the same extent can count on success.

Allcorrect will gladly help you with localization into the languages ​​of these countries. We will also be happy to answer questions about entering other markets.