Another exciting week in mobile! Following our wrap-up of the PG Connects East Meets West conference, we put a lot of focus on Asia this week.What was worth reading during Week 4:
- Asia is the leading app market in the world (TechCrunch)According to Distimo, Asia is currently the world’s most lucrative app market, with 41% of overall app store revenue in December 2013 (App Store and Google Play combined). In comparison, North America generated 31% and Europe 23%. In 2013, revenue in Asia grew by a staggering 162%, fueled in large part by Google Play where revenue quadrupled over the year.NB: The chart showing the split between App Store and Google Play revenue should be looked at carefully in regard to China, as Google Play is quasi non-existent there and most of the Android revenue comes from alternative app stores (such as Wandoujia).
- How Chinese App Store Wandoujia rose to the top (TechInAsia)Last week we reported that Wandoujia had received $120 million in funding by Japanese TelCo Softbank. In the wake of the news, Tech In Asia came up with a nice report on the history of the Chinese app store. It’s worth a read to better understand China’s complex mobile ecosystem.
- The story of Tencent’s WeChat (wēixìn - 微信) (NYTimes)“…part Facebook, part Instagram and even part walkie-talkie.” Learn how WeChat disrupted the social network space in China in this report by the New York Times. The app currently has over 300 million users worldwide and offers services far beyond instant messaging.
- Facebook tests serving ads in third-party apps (TechCrunch)The social network announced that it had started testing mobile ads outside of Facebook, “for a few limited advertisers and partners”. By working directly with both advertisers and publishers, Facebook is taking one step further in becoming an actual ad network.
- Amazon further pushes its services to mobile game developers (VentureBeat)The company recently rolled out a redesigned portal for app and game developers. Generally, Amazon is dedicating a lot of resources to incite developers to choose their platform and optimize their apps/games for it. This includes promotional and economic rewards such as app store features or Amazon Web Services hosting vouchers.