The year of 2021 witnessed the mobile gaming market in Southeast Asia reaches $2.79 billion in revenue, a 15.4% growth compared to the year of 2020. In terms of market share, Google Play and the App Store account for 63.1% and 36.9% in revenue respectively, indicating that revenue in Southeast Asia still mainly comes from Android users.

In terms of downloads, the total number of mobile game downloads in Southeast Asia amount to 8.41 billion in 2021, up 6.3% from 2020. Indonesia is labeled as the top market in Southeast Asia with 3.1 billion downloads, followed by Vietnam and the Philippines.

Mobile Gaming Market Status quo in Vietnam

Among them, mobile gaming revenue in Vietnam grew by 19.9 percent year-on-year to VND14.5 trillion in 2021. Let's take a quick look at the basic status quo in Vietnam. Vietnam's mobile market has low internet costs with fast internet speeds. Due to the factors such as the local policy and environment with different languages and religions, the English adoption rate in Vietnam is relatively low. In addition, it's estimated that there are about 40 million game players in Vietnam.

According to a report released by Niko Partners, Vietnam's gaming market revenue sits at over $1 billion in 2021: the PC segment reaches $550 million while the mobile segment accounts for $450 million. Vietnam ranks second in terms of mobile game downloads, accounting for 22% of overall game downloads. 2020 saw a 10% year-on-year increase in downloads and a 50% hike in revenue in Vietnam. 

The mobile gaming market has grown by leaps and bounds in Vietnam over the past two years, with gaming companies in Vietnam ranking seventh in the world in terms of game downloads in 2021. Vietnam boasts 5 game publishers among the top 10 game publishers in Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia in terms of downloads, covering Amanotes, Onesoft, Gamejam, VNG, and Arrasol. It should be noted that Vietnam gains 3 of the top 10 tool publishers in Southeast Asia in terms of downloads, including Record & Smart Apps, VNG, and LuuTinh. 

Mobile Games Categories and Main Publishers

MMORPG mobile game is the leading category released in Vietnam with 52.4%, followed by the card category, as per the data from SensorTower. It indicates that users in Vietnam favor MMO category games. In addition, various new game genres like RPG are also attracting a large number of Vietnamese. 

Mobile or PC games with martial arts and chivalry IP are favored by most gamers in Vietnam, which can be found in the success of Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile. Published in 2005 in Vietnam, the game swiftly occupies 70% market share in mobile games, breaking a record. All these factors lead Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile to be the largest online game IP in Vietnam. 

Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile can be found in Redfinger APP Store, which gains popularity for users to employ Redfinger cloud phone to enjoy as well. As a virtual Android system, Redfinger enables you to own another Android phone on one device. Running on the cloud server, Redfinger costs nearly no data, storage, and battery power of your own device. With Redfinger, you can run your game 24*7 on the cloud freely. In addition, with ONLY one Redfinger account, you can manage as many cloud phones as you want to meet your multitasking needs.

In addition to martial arts IPs, card games are also on the rise in Vietnam, with the likes of Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact. According to the data from App Annie, Vietnamese players spend money on this category of games, roughly nearing 575% of their total mobile gaming spending. 

VNG has successfully rolled out such heated products as Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile and PUBG in Vietnam. VNG's 2020 financial report showed that VNG's revenue in the gaming sector 2020 amounted to $262 million, accounting for 79.2% of the company's total revenue.

As the top-notch martial arts IP in Vietnam, Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile has achieved a ceiling level of monthly flow. Released in 2016, the game reached a peak monthly flow of nearly $10 million, allowing players to download around 3 million times in its first year.. Nowadays, Võ Lâm Truyền Kỳ Mobile still manages to reach the Top 5 in revenue. 

As an emerging publisher in Vietnam, Funtap obtains a list of achievements, covering 100,000 DAUs of the specific game on its initial launch, and an average monthly flow of over $1 million. In addition to local publishers, there are also Chinese publishers who have solved the tricky problems of royalty number, payment, and promotion in recent years to manage to stand steady in Vietnam. 

Payment Method in Vietnam

At present, the penetration rate of credit cards in Vietnam is only around 5% in that local players have long been accustomed to using third-party payments. The most common method of third-party top-up in Vietnam is WAP (web app purchase), accounting for 98%. After accessing WAP, players can be guided through the game's FanPage, website, and customer service to access the official website for top-ups. In the specific top-up process, mobile payment, phone bill top-up, game card, and e-banking are the main channels for Vietnamese players to complete the three-way payment.

The top 5 mainstream internet banks in Vietnam are included in Vietcom Bank, Techcom Bank, Viettin Bank, BIDV, and VIB. In terms of mobile payments, the most mainstream mobile payments in Vietnam are MoMo, Zalo Pay, Viettel Pay, etc. Among them, MoMo is the free e-wallet application with the largest volume of users in Vietnam, equivalent to Alipay in China; Zalo Pay, whose number of users is expanding dramatically, is also one of the most popular e-payment methods in Vietnam; Viettel Pay, launched in 2018, comes from Viettel Pay, comes from Viettel Communications with over 20 million registered users. 

There are three main telecom operators in Vietnam, covering Viettel, Mobifone, and Vinaphone. Phone bill top-ups are highly adopted in Vietnam as well. The main game cards are Zing Card, Garena Card, Vcoin, Gate Card, SohaCoin, Appota Card, and so on.

E-Banking is the least expensive channel with less than 5%. However, due to the complexity of the online payment process for local bank cards, there is a low adoption rate of Visa cards in Vietnam.