One of the most mature markets in Southeast Asia; Thailand.

2017/01/19

Bumpei Tateno
Country Manager of Thailand branch, Global Business Division, Adways

When asked their opinion about Southeast Asia, a lot of people imagine Southeast Asia as the collection of developing countries. But Thailand in particular is a little bit different from the rest of Southeast Asia. Thailand has never been colonized in its history and had a high economic growth over 20 years ago as the manufacturing base of Western countries and Japan.

Thailand has widespread development area and high quality infrastructures, thus sometime even referred as “developed nation of Southeast Asia”. In 2012, due to the great raise in minimum wage, the spending power has increased and had a population increase of middle class. In the past, companies saw Thailand as the bright destination for their offshore offices due to its high education standard and cheap labor expense. In recent years however, Thailand as market has been catching some attention due to its spending power.

Comparing to the other Southeast Asian countries, population of 68 million people might not appear so impressive. In addition, birth rate is far lower than other countries and the population is estimated to stay mostly stagnant with the slight increase in the future of the longer life expectancy. Looking at the population demographic by age group, the graph is not pyramid shape, which is the typical shape for developing countries, but it is shaped closer to a bell which is the common shape for developed countries.

Considering the stable infrastructures, decent size population, growing middle class and their eagerness to spend, Thailand should be regarded as a market that is near its maturity at this moment rather than a market with unknown future potential due to the population growth. Even though Southeast Asian countries in general might seem less desirable when compared to European countries or East Asian countries, Southeast Asia and Thailand especially is a popular starting ground for many developers. As Thailand has relatively smaller population, it is one attractive market to test out their products, saving the promotional budget.

5 tips that foreign game developers should know before entering Vietnam market.

2017/01/12

Motoki Kikuta
Country Manager of Vietnam branch, Global Business Division, Adways

Vietnam is one of the most attractive destinations for mobile game developers.
As GameK.VN suggests, it is now the largest mobile game market in Southeast Asia.

It becomes apparent when we see the revenue from 3rd party payment which is not often included in reports.

I highly recommend the foreign game developers with high quality games to enter Vietnam market because it is getting harder to succeed in developed countries such as Japan, USA and China due to the high competition and Vietnam market is growing rapidly. I also suggest that it is a good idea to have several revenue sources in developed countries for base revenue in the future.

First of all, I will summarize general information about Vietnam.

As you see down below, we can expect Vietnam mobile game market to keep growing with high growth rate.

I would like to share 5 tips that we should know before entering Vietnam market.

Point 1 Expected revenue
I cannot guarantee foreign game developers 50M USD in Vietnam. Top titles in Vietnam get 1.5 M to 2.0 M USD per month and hit titles earn about 0.7M USD per month in Vietnam.
I know some foreign game developers entered Southeast Asian market with too much effort and left because their effort did not meet their expectation.

Important thing is that we should know the appropriate market size and decide how much effort we should put on.

Point2 Local payment (methods)
As you know credit card penetration in Southeast Asia is very low. In Vietnam it is just 3% (Source: Vietnam finace.vn). However, there are alternative methods for gamers to pay for mobile games like Phone/Game card and Bank Card.

This is revenue ratio of each payment method.

Obviously we have to consider local payment method.

Point 3 Localizing languages
It is true that so many English apps get high ranks in Vietnam but it is not because usual Vietnamese hold high English proficiency but just because there are very few good games which are localized for Vietnamese audience, meaning that there is a great room for foreign game developers to get into.

Point4 Legal Risk
This might not be a familiar topic to you when it comes to Vietnam mobile game Apps.
In Vietnam, basically, each game needs a license from ministry of information and communications. (Source: GameK.vn – Survey on Game market 2015)
I used the word “basically” because there are many apps that come from overseas without license on Vietnamese App store because it is very hard for the government to police all the apps. However, the supervision is getting stricter and stricter that some companies have been punished for the lack of license.

Point 5 Marketing
The big difference is that in Vietnam, game companies cannot proceed mass promotion like TVCM and outdoor advertising because of law. And there are so many fraud traffic in Vietnam even some ad companies use incent traffic for non-incent campaign and so on. To find right partner is very important.

Vietnam is not an easy market but I believe it is worth trying if foreign game developers understand about the market.

We Adways Vietnam was established in 2015 and have helped many both foreign and local game developers to succeed in Vietnam. We have 3 services, incentive ad network, AppDriver Asia, non-incentive ad network, Seads and Pre-registration service.

【Indonesia】Chapter4: Localized marketing.

2016/12/09

Hirotaka Ogura
Country Manager of Indonesia branch, Global Business Division, Adways

In Indonesian market, Facebook page like in any other country is now essential for user retention. In facts social media has large population and Facebook has 90 million users as of August, 2016, which is roughly the same number of the internet users in the country.

In this chapter, to provide a successful precedent of a local company, I will introduce you to Megaxus, PC online game giant. Megaxus values social media and has, of course, its company web page but also has separate web pages for each title.

These media accounts take a prominent role to provide users with various types of information including game events and campaigns.

Megaxus had its world game competition for its popular title, Counter Strike, social media play a significant role in event organization.

The competition was advertised and announced countless times on social media in advance to the event and on the day of the competition, the social media was filled with real time updates. Understanding that Indonesian people love to take pictures and share it on social media, the event was shared and spread by the participants many times. If they had celebrities or influencers at the event, the event would have been even stronger. Buzz Marketing or Influencer Marketing where having celebrities or influencers on the event and having them share on their platforms is a commonly used marketing strategy today.

In mobile gaming particular, Buzz marketing is not yet widely practiced, but as the market grows rapidly, more and more market methods and strategies will be practiced.

As a global ad agency, it is our duty to dive into the local market and learn in depth in order to support ambitious developers to advance into Indonesian market.

by ADWAYS