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西方开发者须知的5大亚洲智能手机市场现状

发布时间:2013-05-11 15:58:36 Tags:,,,,

作者:Masanari Arai

许多西方开发者都很喜欢面向他们所谓的“亚洲智能手机市场”发行应用。其目标非常明显,因为这一区域的手机市场在最近几年出现了巨大的发展。

在亚洲也有许多较大的国家,而基于不同的文化和基础设施,它们也拥有不同的手机使用情况和所有权模式。为了进一步阐述这点,我将在此列出西方开发者所不了解的该市场的5大情况:

mobile-phones(from digitaltrends.com)

mobile-phones(from digitaltrends.com)

日本是手机应用最赚钱的国家

在游戏领域,日本的手机发行商GREE每个月拥有11.21美元的ARPU(每用户平均收益),而Zynga的每月ARPU仅为33美分(根据《华尔街日报》)。在非游戏应用中也是同样的情况。

让我们以LINE为例,这款来自NHN Japan的信息应用已经成为了全亚洲最受欢迎的应用之一(总共拥有1亿多用户)。每个月有10%的日本活跃用户平均将贡献1美元以上于这款应用中。(游戏邦注:LINE用户会购买卡通角色的表情而用于文本信息编辑中。)

日本拥有如此高的盈利率的主要原因:自从1999年,即日本最大手机运营商Docomo创造了应用市场(也就等于应用商店)并向用户收取应用费时(许多服务还是西方手机拥有者认为理所当然的内容),日本的手机用户已经习惯通过花钱去使用应用。例如当Docomo推出通过手机访问电子邮件的功能时,他们每个月会向用户收取300日元(超过3美元)。尽管需要收费,但是这些服务仍然非常受欢迎。实际上,大多数日本人都是先通过手机访问网页,而非PC。所以说日本拥有不同的手机付费文化,并最终带来了更高的收益。

手机主导着日本的电子商务

许多在线零售商,如亚马逊和Rakuten都发现他们有60%的消费是源自日本手机,这一比例远远高于西方国家,特别是美国。这再一次与日本的特殊情况相关。就像我上面所提到的,大多数日本人是最先通过手机访问网页,所以他们更习惯通过手机进行购物。

不同的用户行为也是一大影响元素。与美国人不同的是,大多数日本人是搭乘地铁去上班,因此他们拥有大量的休闲时间在手机上购物。而大多数美国人是自驾出行,也就没有过多时间去用手机购物了。

贯穿亚洲的手机多样性

就像我所说的,对于“亚洲智能手机市场”的统称并不合适。要知道不同国家的所有权比例和应用使用行为也都是不同的。

举个例子来说吧,在拥有1.27亿人口的日本约有4千万人拥有一台智能手机—-大约有四分之一人使用iOS系统,四分之三使用Android系统。而在拥有5千万人口的韩国也有2千多万人拥有智能手机。

但是韩国的应用使用比例却更高。对于我们的投资组合公司的应用(根据我们平台上的7500万名用户进行计算),我们根据最活跃国家的下载情况去计算分布率,并得出如下结果:40%来自美国,10%来自日本,而20%来自韩国。

所以,尽管韩国的智能手机安装率低于美国和日本,但却拥有较高的应用使用比例。这可能是因为韩国人较早开始接触智能手机,并且韩国也拥有更高水平的基础设施和网络连接。并且较小的国土也能帮助他们更轻松地创造广泛的手机覆盖。基于这些原因,4G在韩国不仅更便宜同时也更快速,从而吸引了更多人去下载并使用应用。

中国:最大且最狡猾的鱼

如今,大多数西方开发者都知道中国已经超越美国成为了世界上最大的智能手机市场,即拥有2.4亿安装用户(美国拥有1.2亿)。有些分析家甚至预测中国的智能手机用户在今年年末将达到5亿。

但是在那些想要进入该市场的西方开发者面前还存在种种障碍。除了语言和文化障碍外,IP权利保护以及中国没有Google Play也是很大的问题。Amazon Web Services还未进入该市场,并且这里也寻找许多相互竞争的应用商店。

的确,近几年苹果的App Store已经在中国获得了很大的牵引力,但是在中国Android的安装率还是远远高于iOS。

如此,Great Firewall令许多基于云服务和中国外部社交网站的应用对此束手无策。就像Facebook和Twitter便被中国政府挡在门外,而中国用户也转向当地的社交网站,如新浪微博和腾讯微博。

日本独特的社交媒体文化

当LinkedIn尝试着进入日本市场时,基于文化原因,该社交网站很难在这里获得用户。因为在日本,简历被当成是高度机密的文件,不能与别人分享。所以许多日本人都不愿意使用LinkedIn,不过那些不在日本工作或经常与美国和欧洲公司交流的人却很乐意使用这一网站。

出于同样的原因,游戏开发者也很难将Facebook Connect功能作为一种创建帐号的方法—-日本人不喜欢在社交网站上接触到职场上的合作伙伴,如果这会揭示他们正在玩在线游戏的情况,他们便不会选择这一功能。

相反地,日本人更喜欢使用其它社交网站作为休闲活动,如GREE(专注于社交游戏)和Mixi(专注于娱乐和用户图标)。

结论

尽管西方开发者在面对亚洲众多手机市场时会遇到种种挑战,但是如果能在这里取得成功将是多么让人兴奋的事啊。我们的一个开发合作者,即总部位于美国亚特兰大的Metago便将其ASTRO文件管理应用发展成拥有5500万用户的服务,并且有许多用户是来自亚洲。我敢保证其它西方开发者也能够在亚洲市场上获得同样的成功。而当这种情况出现时,开发者也将不再需要这样的建议—-因为所有的这些情况已经成为他们工作中不可分割的重要组成部分了。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

5 facts about the Asian smartphone market Western developers must know

By Masanari Arai

A number of Western developers I advise are interested in launching their apps in what they call “the Asian smartphone market.” The goal is quite understandable, given that geographic area’s high growth rate in recent years.

But I sometimes fear that term is too broad and can lead to confusion. There are many large countries within Asia, and for various cultural and infrastructure-related reasons, they can have widely varying mobile usage and ownership patterns. To illustrate this, here are five facts about this market that aren’t generally well known by many of my colleagues in the West:

Japan is where mobile apps monetize best

In gaming, Japanese mobile publisher GREE has an ARPU (average revenue per user) of $11.21 per month, while Zynga’s monthly ARPU is 33 cents, according to the Wall Street Journal. We see a similar pattern in non-game apps.

Take LINE, for example, a messaging app from NHN Japan that’s  extremely popular in Asia (it has 100 million total users). Ten percent of its active Japanese users monetize around $1 or more per month. (LINE users purchase “stamps” — cartoon characters they can insert into their text messages.)

There is a very good reason for this high monetization rate: Japanese mobile users have been accustomed to paying to use their apps since 1999, when top mobile carrier Docomo created a market for applications — basically an app store — and charged its users for these apps, many of which provide services most Western phone owners take for granted. When Docomo rolled out email access through mobile, for instance, it charged customers 300 Yen (more than $3) per month to use it. Despite those fees, the service became very popular. In fact, most Japanese first started accessing the Web on their phones, not a PC. So there are very different cultural assumptions in Japan around mobile payments — and consequently, much higher revenue.

Japanese e-commerce is ruled by mobile

Major online retailers such as Amazon and Rakuten see about 60 percent of their purchases come from mobile in Japan, generally much higher than rates in the West, especially the United States. Again, this is related to Japan’s unique conditions. As I noted, most Japanese first began to access the Web on mobile and so are accustomed to shopping via their phones.

Different usage behavior is also a factor. Unlike in United States, most Japanese commute to work via trains and thus have much more leisure time to shop on their phones. Since most Americans drive to work, they are less likely to shop with their phones during their commute. (At least I hope so, if they’re driving!)

Mobile diversity throughout Asia

As I said, to speak generally of “the Asian smartphone market” is somewhat misleading. Consider how the ownership rates and app usage behaviors vary widely from country to country.

For instance, in Japan, about 40 million of the country’s population of 127 million own a smartphone — roughly one fourth use iOS, and three fourths use Android. Korea counts about 20 million smartphone owners among its population of 50 million.

However, app usage is much greater in Korea. For the apps by our portfolio companies (we count about 75 million total users on our platform), a typical distribution rate in terms of downloads from the most active countries is 40 percent from the U.S., 10 percent from Japan, and 20 percent from Korea.

So while the Korea smartphone install base is much smaller than the U.S. or Japan groups, app usage is proportionally much higher in Korea. This is probably because smartphone adaptation in Korea started earlier than either country, and Korea’s data infrastructure and Internet connection speeds are much higher. And as a smaller country by geography, it’s easier to establish broad mobile coverage in Korea. For these reasons, 4G in Korea is cheap and very fast, making it much more appealing to download and use apps.

China: The biggest, most slippery fish

By now, most Westerners know China has surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest smartphone market, with an install base of 240 million to the U.S.’s estimated 120 million. Some analysts even forecast China will grow to have half a billion smartphones by the end of this year.

Less well known are all the barriers that currently exist for Western developers who want to enter that market. Beyond the obvious language and cultural barriers, not to mention problems with IP rights protections, there’s no Google Play in China. Amazon Web Services has not launched thereyet, and there are literally hundreds of app stores vying for customers.

To be sure, Apple’s App Store in China has gained significant traction in recent years, but the iOS install base in China is dwarfed by Android.

Then, of course, the Great Firewall makes many apps that depend on cloud servers and social networks outside of China virtually unusable. Facebook and Twitter are blocked by China’s government, and Chinese users turn instead to local social networks like Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo.

Japan’s unique social media culture

When LinkedIn attempted to launch in Japan, the social network had difficulties gaining users, for cultural reasons, in Japan, resumes are considered highly confidential and not widely shared. To be sure, many Japanese do use LinkedIn, but they tend to be those who work outside Japan or regularly deal with U.S. and European firms.

For similar reasons, game developers have experienced difficulty using Facebook Connect as an account creation method — Japanese usually fear that professional contacts in their social network will think less of them if it’s revealed they are playing online games.

Instead, Japanese prefer using another social networks for their leisure activities, such as GREE (with a focus on mobile games) and Mixi (with a focus on entertainment and user avatars).

Conclusion

Despite all the challenges Western developers face when dealing with Asia’s many mobile markets, it’s exciting to watch them start succeeding there anyway. One of our developer partners, Atlanta-based Metago, turned its ASTRO file management app into a service with 55 million users, a very large percentage of whom are living in Asia. I’m certain many other Western developers can gain as much success across the Asian market. And when that happens, developers won’t need posts like this that cover little-known facts about Asian mobile — because knowing those facts will already be an integral part of their job.(source:venturebeat)


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