Travel Frog Spurs Huge Leap in China's Female Mobile Gamers

This post comes courtesy of our content partners at TechNode.

The number of Chinese female mobile phone gamers has risen sharply over the last year to 367 million, according to a report by Jiguang (in Chinese). Females now make up 34.6 percent of China’s gaming community, with the surprise hit Travel Frog boosting the numbers in recent months.

The report examines the data behind women gamers as developers start to pay more serious attention to this market.

There are almost 60 million more female smartphone gamers now – the equivalent of the population of Italy – than in March 2017. Female gamers have an average of 3.77 game apps installed on their phones and the firm favorite is Kaixin Xiao Xiao Le (开心消消乐), similar to Candy Crush but with animal faces.

Nearly 50 percent of female smartphone gamers are in the 16-25 age bracket with the next largest being 37.4 percent for 26 to 35-year-olds. Perhaps even more revealing is what the data shows approximately where these players are situated. Just 6.3 percent are in China’s 19 first-tier cities and 63 percent are in third, fourth and fifth tier cities. However, it is not clear if the figures are adjusted for population.

Of the top 250 game-related apps, the biggest category played among females are puzzles at 25.6 percent compared to 21.2 percent for gamers overall. A category more popular among women than the overall group was management simulation games (think Roller Coaster Tycoon) at 9.6 percent compared to 4.8 percent.

Kaixin Xiao Xiao Le, released in 2014, is by far the most popular with 68.8 percent of female gamers having it. But when compared to all the gaming-related apps women gamers use, it has dropped in popularity over the past year. From making up almost 16 percent of all game-apps to 13.8 percent by the end of the year after a slight rebound.

The second most popular game Snake Off (贪吃蛇大作战, a sort of group version of Nokia’s Snake) has dropped from 10 percent to 4 percent while Frog Travel has gone from 0 to 4 percent in just a few weeks since mid-January – all the more impressive as it is in Japanese as there is no Chinese version. This may prove to be a flash in the pan as for February as a whole Travel Frog was only attracting 102,000 new users a day compared to 1.1 million for Kaixin Xiao Xiao Le.

READ: A Mobile Game About a Traveling Frog Becomes Surprise Hit in China

Kaixin Xiao Xiao Le has 27.1 million daily active users, way ahead of Binguo Xiao Xiao Xiao with 5.3 million in second place. Travel Frog is fourth with 3.8 million.

Images: ttechman.com, Jiguang