Tencent Poised To Become China's Mobile Gaming Juggernaut

If there were any doubts about Tencent's success in developing its mobile gaming business, they were cast aside after the company reported last month about 570 million registered users for its initial batch of smartphone-based games.

Shenzhen-based Tencent, the mainland's largest listed internet company, commercially released five in-house-developed mobile games in the quarter to September on its Mobile QQ and WeChat social communications platforms.

Each of those games jumped into the top-three ranking of mobile games on the mainland upon release and continued to rank among the top 25 in the domestic market, The games include Timi Match Everyday and Rhythm Master.

Tencent, the mainland's leading developer and operator of online games for desktop personal computers, is now set to become the biggest mobile games company in the world's largest smartphone market.

Alicia Yap, head of China internet research at Barclays, said in the report: "We believe Tencent is best-positioned to leverage the shift in traffic from PC gaming to mobile gaming."

She said the company's experience in running a strong online games business, as well as the wide adoption of Mobile QQ and WeChat, would serve it well in developing its mobile games user base.