The9's Game Zone Hits 30 Chinese Android App Stores, Half a Million Downloads for Tomb of Qin

Chinese gaming company The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) has been pushing its services as an international game distributor this year, first launching its Game Zone service, and then launching an SDK for it this summer. And now The9 says that it has brought 500 licensed games from around the world onto over 30 Android app stores in China – from telco and manufacturer stores to numerous start-up markets.

Regular readers will know that not many Chinese Android users actually stick with Google’s (NASQAQ:GOOG) own Android Market, instead preferring to use local alternatives that offer faster speeds without being tied to a Google account. Recently I reviewed eight such alternative Android app stores in China, and found a healthy ecosystem that supported users here pretty well. But for international game developers, it’s a complex issue and a potential barrier to entry into China (to say nothing of the language divide as well).

The9 reveals today that this game, Tomb of Qin, is its most popular one distributed in China, with 500,000 downloads to date.

That was a strong motivation for The9 in launching its Game Zone. To get a clearer idea of how it has developed to this point in time, Penn-Olson chatted with The9’s Chris Shen, who’s the GM of its mobile business unit.

Prior to launch, The9 realised that Chinese users are not huge fans of the official Market, and so the company looked at “lots of other channels.” Shen continues:

Here, manufacturers provide their own channels, and telcos provide them too. And then there’s HiAPK, GoAPK, Gfans, etc. […] No one channel dominates here yet. That’s why we felt that to get more coverage for those apps we need to partner with more channels.

Mr Shen reveals that its top two distributed apps in China right now have nearly one million downloads between them. The most popular one is Tomb of Qin – made by China’s Dragon Team Interactive – with 500,000 downloads across all of The9’s outlets in China; the second most popular is Speedx 3D – published by London-based Hyperbees – with 450,000 downloads. It’s a happy coincidence that one is local and one is international – showing the power of getting your app out there to more Chinese casual gamers.

Telco App Stores

In China, all three mobile telcos – China Mobile (HKG:0941), China Unicom (HKG:762), and China Telecom (HKG:0728) – have their own markets and have even implemented carrier billing. Also, some manufacturers have done something similar, such as HTC‘s (TPE:2498) own Market, and Motorola‘s (NYSE:MMI) Shop4Apps; both of those are aimed at developing countries which need a customized solution.

And so The9 aimed squarely at these telco app stores, despite – or because of – their weak app offerings. Shen adds:

We have a very in-depth relationship with China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, and we have a ‘store within a store’ – The9 Store – on those, with all our licensed distributed apps.

With China Mobile, The9 even has an SMS-based promo campaign, to ensure that some major titles get a big marketing push. Here’s the Speedx 3D app page on China Mobile’s MMarket: