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PUBG Hits $3 Billion Revenue Milestone 🎯
Player Unknown’s Battle Grounds (PUBG) was released in 2017 and has been one of the most successful mobile games in the world, a direct peer to Fortnite, another huge gaming success. It was created by South Korean company Bluehole, which is partially owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent. Over the last seven months, the game has doubled its lifetime revenue to reach $3 Billion.
A recent report from Sensor Tower outlined some of the game’s key stats, including the data point that PUBG made $270 Million in month of March alone. PUBG’s success is a good temperature check for the overall gaming market, which is doing really well in the time of coronavirus. Like most gaming apps, PUBG makes most of its money from players making in-app purchases.
South East Asia’s Streaming Platforms 📺
South East Asia (SEA) is a complicated region, composed of eleven countries that make up a combined population of 680 Million people. Between January to April, online viewing time has increased by 150% across the largest South East Asian countries. In SEA, the market for online streaming platforms is complex, with both global players like Netflix and local players like iFlix.
Malaysia’s iFlix has 25 Million active users across SEA and was bought out by Tencent after financial troubles earlier this year. A rival platform, Singapore-based Hooq had 80 million active users but shut down in April after struggling to overcome their massive losses. The coronavirus has caused ad revenue to drop, and the model of a streaming platform paying lots of money to acquire content upfront has been challenging in South East Asia where customers usually have free alternatives. Hong Kong’s Viu uses a freemium model where their content is free but their 41 Million users can pay to remove ads.
There are also many new entrants into the market. China’s Tencent is using their iFlix acquisition as a cornerstone for their SEA strategy. China’s iQiyi is also planning to launch their streaming service in the region. Disney+ announced recently that they are opening a Singapore office this year and likely launching very soon. And ride-hailing app Gojek, Indonesia’s first unicorn, is also launching their own video service called GoPlay.
Ant Financial is the fintech spin-off of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Ant has become on its own one of the world’s biggest companies and is planning to float on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange later this year, at a potential valuation of $200 Billion. Depending on your definition, this would make Ant Financial the biggest privately-held startup unicorn in the world and the biggest public stock listing of the year.
Ant Financial is not always a well known player on the world tech scene, but it’s likely one of the most underrated. Alibaba spun out Ant Financial in 2014, initially created as the payment processing system for Taobao, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform. Alipay, which is the primary product of Ant Financial, is the world’s mobile and online payments platform. On top of mobile payments, Ant Financial runs the world’s largest money-market fund and offers a diverse set of financial services. Alipay currently has 1.2 Billion users globally and Alibaba still holds a 33% ownership stake in Ant Financial.
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