The prospects of the mobile games market in Southeast Asia

The game market of Southeast Asia over the past years has attracted the attention of analysts, experts and the developers themselves. In this article we will try to tell you why.


Southeast Asia is a macro-region covering continental and island territories between China, India and Australia. It includes 11 countries: on the continental part are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and on the island - Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines.

As mobile game markets, 6 countries are usually considered, which account for 97% of revenue: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.



When analyzing information about these countries, we were faced with the fact that the divergence of data on the mobile games markets of Southeast Asia in different sources is quite significant. This concerns the assessment of both the number of users of mobile games and the profitability of the market.

Below is the rating of Southeast Asian countries according to Statista:


And according to Newzoo:


Read more about our ranking methodology here .

However, analysts agree on one thing: Indonesia 's largest mobile gaming market. The Android system dominates in this region, most residents go online from a smartphone and spend a lot of time on social networks.

The most popular game genres in these countries are Strategy and RPG. Among the players of mobile games in these countries, games of Asian (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) and European developers are equally popular.

Features of users of smartphones in these countries:


Interesting facts:

• Blackberry BBM messenger is widespread in Indonesia, Zalo in Vietnam, and Line in Thailand.
• In Malaysia, Singapore and the Republic of the Philippines, one of the official languages ​​is English.
• In 2015, the Philippines was named the world center of social networks.
• One of the reasons for the constant interruptions in the work of the wired Internet in Malaysia are sharks, which regularly bite fiber-optic cables laid along the bottom of the sea.
• Since 2017, the practice of money transfers through Facebook and Twitter has been introduced in Singapore. Now for payment it’s enough to create an account in well-known social networks, link an account to it and indicate your ID when transferring funds.
• The Republic of the Philippines has 2 state languages ​​and 19 regional. According to these indicators, the country is only slightly inferior to India .

In addition to rapid growth, the Southeast Asian mobile game market is attractive for its relative ease of entry: there are no such strict laws as in China or South Korea. In Indonesia and Malaysia, there are restrictions imposed by Islamic standards, but we are not aware of any violations of these standards and the subsequent sanctions for mobile developers. In addition, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore may have enough English.

Below is a list of languages ​​for localization and brief information on them:


So, than Southeast Asia may be of interest to game developers:

• The fastest growing regional market.
• Active use of smartphones by the population.
• Lack of significant legislative barriers compared to other Asian markets.
• To reach all countries for the game, localization into 3-4 languages ​​is enough.
• Games of Asian and European developers can count on success to the same extent.

Company Allcorrect happy to help you with localization into the languages of those countries. We will also be happy to answer questions about entering other markets.