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I'm Hyunse.
I'm working for the business development team in Korea.
And today I'm here to talk about how
to go global in a successful manner.
And I'm going to walk through the best practices that
is important to take to global market.
So this is the agenda today.
I'm going to begin with tips for global entry
and share some success stories of actual developers
that really work closely with us.
And at the end I will conclude talking little bit
about the emerging trends around the globe in the mobile world.
So today we're living in a truly mobile world.
As mentioned in previous presentations,
Google Play is a truly global market.
Countries shaded in blue represents
countries that has the largest install base around the world.
Countries with the dollar sign are the countries
that represent the largest revenue
markets around the world.
Revenue-wise, Korea, Japan, and US is the largest,
and it is constantly growing at this moment.
Also email is growing extremely fast
with Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, and France
leading the growth.
So looking at the global market, the question
will be what is needed in order to successfully enter
the global market?
There are three important aspects
that you need to consider when you're
thinking about international expansion.
You need to acquire the right users first.
Engage with them to make them feel that they are loved.
And retain them to make them stay and not leave.
In order to achieve this though, you
need to first know your target audience
that you are targeting.
So what do I mean by know the audience?
These three questions are the questions
that you want to ask during the preparation
of your global strategy.
Users use different devices in different times,
enjoying different content varying by region.
It is important to know what mobile device they use,
when they use the devices, and how
they use the devices with what content.
In the Western region, people tend
to use their mobile devices sitting down.
And what I mean by sitting down, you'll know if the next slide,
but when they are not on the move.
In the US, for example, mobile devices
are used mostly at home, on your couch, after dinner.
Tablets are actually used more in the US, in the EMEA markets,
compared to APAC because of this reason.
Now this is APAC.
This is a typical, everyday commuting scene
in Korea and Japan.
You may have noticed that everyone's head is looking
down, looking into their smart phones.
There is this funny story about the subway in Korea.
There were a lot of advertising agencies
that actually had ads on ceilings of subways.
But after the launch of smart phones in Korea, a lot of them
closed down, because no one looked up.
So smart phones are very heavily used
on the move in the APAC regions.
Contents are very different also.
I want you to take a close look at these games
before I move on to the next slide.
There's some famous titles.
In the US, Clash of Clans, Heyday.
Germany, we see a game from Kabam.
These are games in the APAC region.
Now in Korea gamers tend to enjoy
3D, cartoonish, realistic, online, heavy action,
multiplayer games.
And gamers are mostly composed of core users.
In Japan you see a lot of dragons,
you see a lot of anime, and they're mostly
composed of hybrid genres.
Now after knowing your audience, you
are now prepared to enter the global stage.
I'm going to take you through this journey, step by step.
The first thing you want to do is acquire your users
by letting the users know that you really care about them.
When thinking about international expansion,
it is very important to keep the APK size as small as you can.
The smaller the size, more likely
the chance for the user to download your app or your game.
Well, in Korea, you can download one gigabyte in 30 seconds.
But if you think about Southeast Asian countries,
it actually takes about five to 10 minutes
to download an APK smaller than 50 megabytes.
So keep your size small if you're
thinking of global expansion.
The next thing that you want to think about
is designing your icons.
Designing icons that stand out, that is appealing to the users
is extremely important.
Because on the Play Store, remember
that the first impression of the users towards your app or game
is through the icons.
Some developers actually use our Developer Console
and have different icons by region,
trying to match with the local tastes as much as possible.
So this is Eternity Warriors Three by Glu Mobile.
On the left-- yes, on the left-- is the icon used in Korea,
and on the right is the icon used in the United States.
I talk to the Country Director of Glu Mobile
and asked him why did you use a female character for Korea,
for your icon.
And his answer was, after studying the Korean gaming
market, he realized that it is important to target
the high ARPU male gamers of Korea that
enjoy playing female characters over male.
Upon launch, it was able to acquire
a lot of hardcore gamers, which brought a successful launch
in Korea for Eternity Warriors Three.
In addition to icons, you need to make
the titles relevant to the local audience.
This is an example of a game called Ace Fishing Wild
Catch developed by Come To Us, a Korean developer.
The Korean title actually doesn't mean Ace Fishing Wild
Catch.
Instead, if I translate it, it translate into God of Fishing,
which is not really appealing to the Western markets.
God of Fishing, I mean-- But if I translate Ace Fishing Wild
Catch back into Korean, it doesn't make any sense.
So it is really important to make the titles right
for the local audience that you are targeting.
Screenshots are very important also.
It is important to localize them,
and users, especially in APAC, do not like unlocalized assets.
It actually makes them move away from the apps details page,
the moment they realize that the screenshots are not
localizing to their language.
These are screenshots of a trends curation app called
Vingle, and they did a great job in actually localizing
their screenshots across different regions.
For games.
These are screenshots of popular games in Korea, Japan,
and in the US.
For Korea and Japan, developers tend
to use screenshots with characters and art
that are very distinct and very stylized.
In the Western market, characters and visuals
are more realistic compared to that of Korea and Japan.
Now if you take all these steps and are
ready for the global launch, the Google Play Team
is here for you to expose your global content through our Play
Stores across regions.
What you see now are the Play Stores in Japan, Korea,
and in the United States.
We are here to help you to acquire
real users all around the world.
Now once you successfully acquired your users,
it is time to engage with them.
You need to know your users that you've
acquired in order to do so.
In Korea and Japan, pre-registration
is a very popular way to engage users before launch.
So what you do is, if a user registers before launch,
they will receive a small, in-app gift,
once the game or app is launched.
Now according to the developers in Asia, this tool
is the most powerful tool to get the user into action, even
before launch.
When designing a game or an app, you also
need to think about the different UIs
that different regions like.
In Japan, for example, what you see on the left,
there is a lot of information crammed into one screen.
However, contents that are popular in the West,
has a much more simpler UI, and is much more straightforward.
Having the correct UI design for the target market will be also
a very important aspect in keeping the users from leaving,
once they install your game or an app.
When you localize, you need to be very careful,
and be very accurate.
If you take a look at the Korean at the top,
it looks pretty much the same.
Circles, squares.
Right?
But there is a big error in the line break.
So if I write this out in English,
hi my name is Mic hael.
So the line break is right in the middle of Michael,
which can be very disturbing to the Korean users.
And especially in APAC users are very sensitive about language.
So it is very important to localize accurately,
to make the users feel that they're being loved.
And [? Broheme ?] mentioned this,
pricing is also very important.
The $0.99 is for the dollar, the Euro.
But in Korea and Japan, it all ends with a zero.
Regarding monetization of games, it
is also very different across regions.
In the Western markets, users tend to use more money.
On in-app purchases, in speeding up progress,
such as building buildings and upgrading them.
This is a little different in APAC, though.
Gamers in APAC spend the most money in the Gotcha System.
Does anyone not know what a Gotcha System is?
OK.
It is a very popular in-app tactic that the APAC users use.
Basically, it's like a lucky draw.
Through this lucky draw, you upgrade your characters,
you get equipment, you get five star rated shields,
through this lucky draw.
And this is the most popular in-app tactic,
and the most popular in-app that the APAC users actually
use money on.
So now that you have the users engaged,
your next step is to think about retention.
You have your users in action, and you don't want your users
to stop their action and leave.
Globally successful developers provide customer service
in languages that they support within their game or app.
This is very important since it connects
to your rating on the Play Store which [? Broheme ?] just
showed you.
And listening to user feedback of the global audience
actually teaches developers a lot of new information.
Making them able to provide the best
service for the regional audience.
Notifications are powerful tools in user retention.
It is important to design events and notify users
so that they are constantly being entertained.
Korean developers for example, have events and updates
once to twice every week, in order to keep the users
entertained.
But when you design your events, you need to be very careful.
You need to make the events relevant to the audience
that you're targeting.
Valentine's Day, for example, as you look in the screen,
it's a screenshot from Badland, developed by Frogmind,
was used as a theme of their map during Valentine's Day.
But this is not a big day in APAC, compared to the US.
So seasonal events tend to work well in the Western regions,
but in the APAC regions, it's a different story.
In Japan, for example, collaboration with strong IPs
is the most popular method of events within games and apps.
Clash of Clans, when it got popular,
it had a collaboration with Puzzle and Dragons.
And Puzzle and Dragons is actually
collaborating with Dragon Ball, which
is the biggest anime franchise in Japan.
In Korea, local celebrities are actually used on events.
There's this game called Legion of Heroes
by-- it's a very core MORPG game, developed
by Nexon Company.
They used actual popular celebrities
and made in-game characters of them.
Again, targeting the high ARPU male gamers
that enjoy using female characters for game play.
So now I'm going to talk about a little about success cases
from Korea, that actually was successful
in the global market.
The developers that I'm about to show you
are developers that we have been working
very closely in the Korea team.
So this app is called Vingle.
I showed you this app for the localization
part in screenshots.
What is great about this app is that allowed
its global success was following the Android design guidelines.
They use Action Bar Navigation Drawer, and tabs,
making it easy for the global audience that
use Android to use this app.
Currently Vingle is rated 4.8 from the global users.
And the users are constantly growing at this moment.
The second app I want to talk about
is an app called Polaris Office.
This is an app that allows users to edit office documents
on your tablet or on your mobile phone.
Not only they follow the design guidelines,
but they also use a subscription model
that [? Broheme ?] talked about.
And they're actually constantly generating revenue every month
for the premium version for service.
They currently have two million users, worldwide,
and 90% of the users are overseas.
For games, this is a game called Summoners War, which
was developed by a Korean developer, Come to Us.
This game has around 3.7 current users at this moment,
and it's mostly composed of users outside of Korea.
They're holding regional events, that I mentioned in my session.
In-game for local users in different areas.
They're providing customer support in six languages.
And they're engaging with users through local communities.
More than 60% of the revenue currently
is generated by this game is happening overseas.
So I walk through the journey of how to go to global.
And I showed you some case studies
of successful global entry.
Before I wrap up, I would like to talk about some emerging
trends in the mobile world.
Mobile devices are not phones anymore.
They are the ultimate tool for high quality entertainment
content.
The higher the quality, the better
chance of you having real users that
matter all around the world.
Korea developers these days, are using the mobile devices
to provide stunning games of high quality.
On the left side you see a high quality MORPG game,
and on the right a baseball game, that is close to real
and is using actual baseball players in Korea.
Users today are always connected everywhere.
Engagement with the users as a developer is also important,
but engagement among users is becoming
a key trend in the mobile world.
For games, players engage by playing together with friends.
And for apps, users see each other's activities,
what they're doing on their app.
Contents that involve users within the content,
are growing fast all around the world.
Connecting from the previous slide,
it is important to keep the users engaged even more
outside of the game or app through empowering
your communities.
And if you have a chance, don't hesitate
to go beyond the digital world.
Create a franchise just like what
Gung Ho did for Puzzle and Dragons, which
is the picture at the top.
And like what Rovio did with Angry Birds.
Angry Birds is actually very popular the licensing business
in Korea, and it's trying to expand into Japan
also, at this moment.
So whenever you're ready, or have questions regarding APAC.
Don't hesitate to reach out to our teams.
We have a strong team in APAC.
Japan, led by Yoshi, Korea, led by my boss, KH.
And traditional Chinese markets led by Kevin in Taiwan.
Here today we have teams from Mountain View
and from EMEA that's helping you expand into those territories.
But whenever you're ready to enter the APAC market,
don't hesitate to email us and we will
be willing to help you grow your business
in the international world.
That's all I have for today.
Thank you for listening.