Tencent unseats NetEase in battle for global mobile app leadership

China’s Tencent Holdings overtook Netease to grab the top spot in mobile apps revenue in the first quarter on the back of its blockbuster title Honour of Kings, while its free-to-play PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) also grabbed top spot as the most downloaded mobile game worldwide.

Total mobile app downloads in the first quarter, including games and non-games, were up 7.6 per cent to 25.4 billion on Apple’s App Store and Google Play worldwide, according to a report by US research firm Sensor Tower Store Intelligence. 

Tencent was No 1 in the quarter for overall app revenue, including games, displacing rival Chinese firm NetEase, publisher of the popular Onmyouji game, which held the top spot in the fourth quarter last year.

Tencent, the world’s top grossing games publisher last year, recorded more than 50 million downloads of the mobile version of PUBG in the January to March period.

Revenue from the company’s smartphone games rose 59 per cent year on year to 16.9 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion) last year, according to Tencent’s annual results. Honour of Kings was the No 1 game in Apple’s App Store last year.

Tencent, which operates China’s ubiquitous messaging app WeChat, is leading a group of Chinese publishers making their presence felt in the global mobile app market, with rising interest seen in non-game iOS apps. China accounts for US$1 out of every US$4 generated globally across app stores, in-app advertisements and mobile e-commerce, according to recent estimates from analytics company App Annie. The country’s games market was worth an estimated US$32.5 billion last year, accounting for more than a quarter of the global market, according to research firm Newzoo.