Growing market
Games are seen as one of the most promising sectors of China's mobile Internet industry. At the recent Global Mobile Internet Conference Beijing 2014, Xiao Jian, chief executive officer of the Nasdaq-listed China Mobile Games and Entertainment Group, said that with an annual growth rate of 200 percent, China will overtake Japan as the world's largest mobile-game market in the next two years. Industry insiders estimate that the value of the market will reach between 25 billion and 26 billion yuan by the end of this year.
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China is home to between 2,000 and 5,000 mobile-game content providers. They produce thousands of games every year, but only about 200 will be successful, said Hu Bin, joint-CEO of the game developer and marketer Ourpalm Co. "As a result, after six months to a year, many startups face huge pressures," he said.
Well-known novels, cartoons and animated films find an audience among game players, who are attracted by the familiarity. The market is huge - in January, an authorized game adaptation of Disney's Frozen was downloaded more than 6 million times in the four weeks after it was released, according to Legal Person magazine.