Game market in Middle East
Before we talk about the market in Middle East, let’s take a look at some information about this region first,this will give us a better understanding about the potential market in Middle East.Details as follow:
Map of the Arab world and national distribution
* Total population: 338 million Total area: 13,900 km2
* 21 countries, contains many similarities, there are also many differences
* Common include:
1, all advocate the values ​​of humility, and strong family values
2 Religion: Islam or Christianity are
3, Language: Arabic saying
* Differences include:
1, social and cultural
2, the level of economic development
3, the technological level
Regional economy
* Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a measure of domestic purchasing power of an economic indicator
* PPP target range in the region:
1, the maximum
United Arab Emirates $ 49,600 (third in the world)
Qatar $ 29,800 (Global 28)
Bahrain 25800
2, the minimum
Syria $ 4,200
Sudan $ 2,400
Yemen $ 1,000
3, and the distribution among countries
The region contains some of the world’s richest and poorest countries
Social situation in the region
Proportion of the total population age group
213 million under the age of 30, 64%
122 million over 30 years old 36%
51.7% of the male population 173 million
Technological conditions in the region
Index Total
Internet penetration (percentage of total population) of 10.5% -2007
Internet users in 37 million -2008
Internet user growth rate (2000-2008) 1450%
2010, 58 million Internet users is expected to
-2007 Broadband users in 2.6 million (compared with 2006 increased by 50%)
2010, 6.4 million broadband subscribers is expected to
Technological conditions in the region – Broadband
* The area of ​​broadband access in three years ago
* Most of the countries in the region have begun a massive increase in broadband
infrastructure in terms of inputs (including 3G and DSL networks)
1, the average number of broadband subscribers per country per year growth rate
of 50-120%. The number of DSL users in Saudi Arabia in 2005-2007 increased by
480% between.
2, 2010, 3G subscribers are expected to reach 300 million
3, 6 countries in the region covered by WIMAX network
Online game market in the Arab region has developed rapidly over the past few years, especially after the explosive growth of Internet users (in the increase of 1,648.2% over the past nine years.) in the region.According to Internet World Stats statistics, the region has 57 million Internet users, including North Africa (mostly Arabic-speaking countries), if take the entire Middle East and North Africa region into account,the number of Internet users reached 85 million. Internet users in the Arab region has the world’s fastest growth rate.
It is estimated that 16 million Internet users worldwide play games, of which 38% came from the Arab region, and this proportion continues to rise.
For a long time because there’s copyright issues in the region, large game developers paid little attention to the basic market, but those developers entered the MMORPG market 5 years ago, basically these game developer had not encountered this problem because most of them are freeDownload or free play, so they will not have any problem of copying.
Travian game is the first one to enter the Arab MMORPG market,released its first game in 2005 in the region, and it is about in two years’ time this game was the only one operated in the region of this kind, and according to Travian, said the income of Arab language version is more than all of the income form other versions (more than 15 languages) .
This result is really so surprised by world renowned game companies, Bigpoint and Gameforge and some other game companies began to quickly localize its Arab language version games to push into the region, this also created opportunities for some small companies ,like the Wizards Productions,by operationg with the local operators or by independent operating the game.
CCJK insist on using the original translators to handle all the foreign language projects,and CCJK’s cost effective solutiosn will definitely fuel your marketshare in the local area.