Competitive Benchmarking of Mobile Gaming Companies

Competitive benchmarking portrays a picture of the global companies in terms of how they are positioned in the market. It helps identify the best practices which can help companies remain competitive, by tracking the performance and activities of competitors.

Product Objectives:
Competitive matrix gives you an edge by indicating what and where other companies are focussing more on. It enables you to understand the overall conduct of potential mobile gaming companies in the market.

The benchmarking also gives an understanding about the operational efficiency of the entities. Relatively smaller yet growing companies can track how leaders in gaming industry are performing in the market. Companies can choose to trace their investments, organic and inorganic growth strategies, and innovations the competitors are actively pursuing.

Competitive Benchmarking of Mobile Gaming Companies

Business Benefits:
1) With the benchmarking report, one can be well versed about the leaders, challengers, innovators, and niche players

2) Be informed about the prospective competitors gaining edge and progressing rapidly

3) Understand the customer preferences towards different competitors and their products

4) Apprehend the kind of brand image that the mobile gaming companies have in the market

5) How different companies are emphasizing on the R&D and innovation

6) Which competitors are approaching expansion and product development, and where does the priority lie

7) Companies can fine-tune business efforts and form new market strategies based on the evaluation

8) The benchmark can also act as the early indicator of which companies are best suited for investments, prospecting, and strategic alliance

How the companies were selected:
The companies were chosen based on a plethora of parameters, such as financial strengths, intensity in their business activities in the market, the innovations that they are invested on, the mergers and acquisitions that they made in the recent years, amongst others. We also took into consideration the leading global companies that were relatively small compared to the others but are driving the market with products and innovation.

The companies that we have taken into consideration are,

Activision Blizzard
Bandai Namco Entertainment
Electronic Arts
Gameloft
NetEase, Inc.
Netmarble
Take-Two Interactive
Tencent
Ubisoft
Zynga
How we evaluated and analyzed:
The analysis was conducted after separating the parameters into business capabilities and solution/product capabilities. Financial strength was given significant weight while determining their position in the market. In the financial strength parameter, net revenue growth was a vital sub-parameter. The companies’ global presence, their marketing and positioning strategies, their sales strategies were also considered while evaluation and scoring the companies. Parameters such as product launch was one of influencing factor under the product capabilities. These are only a few parameters and sub-parameters by which each of the companies were evaluated.

Scoring was done based on relative positioning of the companies as well as assigned weighted-average against sub-parameters. This helped in drawing a conclusive, fair, and unbiased analysis of the competitors in the global mobile-gaming market.

Tencent, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts are the leaders in the mobile gaming space. The organic growth strategies carried out by these three companies outnumbered the others. All three companies aim at establishing a better connection with their consumers through an open and connected ecosystem. Also, they have a refined market and positioning strategy in place. In terms of the inorganic growth strategies, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts are the trend-setters. EA partnered with Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other app stores to expand its customer base. Ubisoft made several acquisitions and partnerships to improve the consumers’ gaming experiences and to strengthen its online services.

Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive are the challengers in the mobile gaming segment. Activision Blizzard has a commendable brand image, global presence in the market, and an well-defined marketing and sales strategies working in its favour. It, however, falls behind in terms of the number of yearly mobile game launches. In the year 2018, it announced only two major mobile games, Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty: Legends of War. Also, most of its mobile games are restricted to the casual genre, unlike the other companies. Take-Two Interactive performed well in the sales and organic strategy sub-parameter. It can improve its position in the market by providing more engaging gaming content and expanding its global presence as its gaming services are mostly constricted to the US.

NetEase and Gameloft performed well in terms of product capabilities, but were held back by their business capabilities, comparatively. Though Gameloft offers several options to its consumers in terms of genre and theme, it needs to work on several areas including brand image, innovation and R&D, and organic strategies to improve its position in the market. NetEase was amongst the leading companies who invested the most in the R&D. Also, it launched over 15 mobile games in the year 2018 alone. The company’s mobile games are available across multiple genres and themes including action, adventure, RPG, strategy, casual, MMO, battle royale, and so on.