Niko Partners: Estimated 192 Million Chinese Mobile Gamers by the End of 2012

Japan's DeNA has been pushing Mobage hard in China (photo from Tokyo Game Show)

Research firm Niko Partners has announced their new report, China’s Mobile Games Market 2012, teasing some interesting figures about how mobile games are progressing in the middle kingdom thus far.

Perhaps most remarkable is their claim that mobile gamers will soon surpass the number of PC gamers in the country, with the total expected to reach 192 million in 2012 alone. The company’s managing partner, Lisa Cosmas Hanson notes:

[We project] fast growth in mobile games revenue in China led by rising adoption of 3G usage, soaring sales of smartphones from a wide array of vendors, and the desire to play entertaining, inexpensive games on these smart mobile devices

As you well know if you follow this blog, we regularly talk about mobile gaming players from Japan (see GREE, DeNA) perhaps more than any other mobile gaming companies. But in contrast to Japan, Niko Partners notes that the Chinese mobile games market has no clear market leader at this point.

I can’t help but wonder how much share of a company like Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432) has in China, since it has been pushing Mobage China quite hard in the past six months with a number of important partnerships.

China’s Tencent is currently the nation’s online gaming king – but that’s mainly via desktop games. It has a lot to lose, potentially, in the shift to mobile gaming.