Now the world’s biggest smartphone market, China represents a wealth of still-growing opportunities for mobile game developers.
While app developers in the West are fretting that the so-called “Gold Rush” is over, China’s market is still growing rapidly with north of 800 million active smart devices.
But the mainland Chinese market is pretty impenetrable to outsiders, with its own contained ecosystem of more than 200 different app stores along with different cultural tastes and preferences.
That’s why one of the country’s largest game developers, Chukong, is partnering with San Francisco’s Chartboost to bring their cross-promotion and monetization tools to Chinese developers. Chukong, which built an early breakout hit called Fishing Joy, has more than 63 million monthly active users. It has a multi-pronged model where it operates a gaming studio, builds developer tools and publishes games from third-party developers.
Chartboost is a gaming-focused startup that began as a free cross-promotion network for app makers that wanted to market their work in other apps. It has since evolved into offering direct deals, where separate developers can sell promotional space to each other based on installs.
While the rest of the mobile advertising market has faced an onslaught of competition from juggernaut Facebook, which pulled $1.7 billion in mobile advertising revenue in the last quarter, Chartboost has managed to hold its own by focusing exclusively on game developers, the most lucrative part of the app ecosystem.
Before the partnership, Chartboost recently localized its offerings in the Chinese language.