"The App Economy in Thailand" by Moo Natavudh, CEO, Ookbee Presented at ThailandSatellite 2013 More information: e27.co/echelon

1. The App Economy in Thailand
Echelon 2013 Thailand Satellite

2. Hi Everyone!
I’m Moo from OOKBEE

3. +
Ookbee : the Latest Numbers
Thailand’s #1 e-book store
90% market share
TOP10
Grossing Apps
on Thai App Store
everyday
for the past
600 days
3,273,547
users
4.23M
downloads
10,820
new users*
every day
* avg last 30 days
Ookbee had delivered over
10 Million Books

4. Content Team
Developers
• Launched Jan 2011 / The team has grown from 5 to over 40 staff
• We are at Month 28 and have been profitable since month 7
• Sep 2012 Ookbee raised US$2 million in funding from Shin Corporation
• We made $400k in 2011 and around $3M in 2012
• We are now operating in Thailand,Vietnam and Malaysia with 3 more
countries this year.
Ookbee Team

5. App Store Publishing

6. Estimated Number of Apps
iPhone
iPad
Amazon
WP
Play
BlackBerry
As of Mar 2013
800k on iOS
750k on Play
200k on WP
100k on Win8

7. Key trends across stores, countries and categories
iOS App Store maintained its strong lead in monetization, earning about 2.6x the app revenue of Google Play.
Q1 2013 , Google Play has achieved higher growth rates than the iOS App Store for both downloads and revenues.

8. Local..Local..Local..
10% local apps generate more than 50% Revenue

9. The overlap proportion of the top applications of the United
States with other English speaking countries (Canada, Australia
and the UK) is significantly higher than it is with non-English
speaking countries.
My Guess is
Thailand is
somewhere here!
maybe 15%

10. +
Thailand: Monetization Case Study
Sep 2012: App Annie
Thai UI
Eng UI

11. Launching an App in
South-east Asia?
It’s now or never!

12. Top Countries – Downloads and Revenues
Thailand is among the
global top 15
Mobile apps markets
the only country in
SEA
only after China, Japan
and S. Korea in Asia
Based on App Annie Worldwide Total Category, Q3 2012

13. Fastest Revenue Growth Countries - All Categories
(Jan-Sep 12)
Growth is higher since the base is smaller.....
Here we are at
#3!!
Hooray!!
Here too! #9
Based on App Annie, Top 25 Grossing countries of 2012 Sep, comparing Jan-Sep Growth rate

14. Fastest Revenue Growth countries for Games
Based on App Annie, Game Category, comparing Jan-June 12 Growth rate
Fastest Revenue
Growth in the
world
#2 on
Google Play

15. Fastest Download Growth Countries for Games
Based on App Annie, Game Category, comparing Jan-June 12 Growth rate
For Both iOS and
Google Play,
4 out of 5
Fastest
Revenue Growth
Countries
are in SEA

16. Thai App Store VS
The World
• in the US, Based on numbers given by Distimo, about 80,000
will get you into the top 10. Huge numbers.
• in Japan, it’s 20,000 a day to be in Top 10 and 60,000 a day
to be at #1 Top Free Charts
• in Thailand, from my personal experience, it’s only take
10,000 a day to be #1 in Top Free already

17. +
Case Study: Ookbee User and Application Download
* It took Kobo 2 years to reach 5M users (Globally) before Rakuten acquired it for $315 Million in Dec 2011
** Ookbee 2.9M users in 2 years is only in Thailand and SEA (Locally) / Our penetration rate is way higher
The 1st million took
13 months
The 2nd million took
6 months
The 3rd million took less than
5 months
The 4rd million will take
less than
4 months

18. Successful Publishing
it will take Ookbee 4 Months for our next 1 Million
Everybody remembers the success stories of applications that
gathered millions of users within a couple of days.
Draw Something did it in nine days. However, with the right strategy it is possible to gain one million
users much faster. Naver, one of the most successful Asian publishers, launched five applications at
the end of November, all of which quickly became the most popular applications in many Asian
countries. Line Pop, the most popular of those five, generated 1.75 million downloads within the first
three days of its launch. Moreover, Line Pop also generated one million in estimated revenue within
the first 12 days. (Line has over 80M users worldwide and over 10M users in Thailand)

19. Launching App in Thai Market
My Personal Experience

20. Thai Market - Real Number
Let’s see what’s like when you launch an app
specifically for Thai market only
• just another app in App Store
• my Good App
• my Very Good App
Just Another App

21. +
Ookbee App Eco
Out of 200K Apps, We
are No.1-5 Top Grossing
for the past 500 Days!!
Beats Zinio and all
popular games! Angry
Bird?
50+ of our 150+ apps on
Top list!

22. Max around 500 downloads/
day when launch..
then average around
50 per app per day
Total just around
36K download in 24 months
From almost 150 Apps,
we have around 120
“Just-Another-App”
Just Another App in App Store :(
*Still 36K x 120 = 4.32 M, even if same user download several
apps, I expected we have generated over a million users from
these just another apps

23. My Good App :)
Max around 900 downloads/
day when launch..
then average around
120 per app per day
Total around
90K download in 24 months
From almost 150 Apps,
we have around 25
“Good App”

24. My Very Good App :)
Max around 6,000
downloads/day when launch..
then average around
2,000 per app per day
Total around
1.5M download in 24 months
From almost 150 Apps,
we have 2
“Very Good App”
*My Number was started back in 2011. I expect that it
would be 15,000 per day easily first day when launched
now for a very good app.

25. Let’s make some money!
App Monetization

26. App Monetization
• Paid App Simple game ex. Angry Bird?
• In-App Purchase (ex. Social Game/Content - ex. HayDay, Poker)
* Ookbee is here
• Apple/Google
• Mobile
• Other ( Ex. In our case Credit Card/ Cash via 7-11)
• Advertisement (Simple Game/ TV-Radio Streaming/News)

27. In-App Purchase

28. +
Other Payment Channel Options in Thailand
Apple/Play
Credit Card (online)
or Cash at 7-11
Pay with Mobile phone bill
(Pre-paid and Post-Paid)

29. Ad Revenue
• Free App Ad Revenue simulation.
• Impression : 1,000,000
• CTR 1%
• CPC 4 THB
• Ad revenue: 40,000 THB
• How long to get 1M impression? A very good app maybe
several days. Good App maybe a month. Just another app
maybe 6-12 months.

30. Exactly!
How Much Money Can I Make?
(in Thailand and the rest of the world)

31. How big is the whole market?
All markets combined as of Nov 2012
15M USD a day for iOS
3.5M USD a day for Google Play
Japan + S.Korea + US 70%
Game contribute 90% in Japan
And 95% in S. Korea
US + Japan = 50%
China is growing fast
and 90% is from game

32. US Market
• If you make it to the top 10 US Top
Grossing Apps : around $70K ~ 2M
THB per day
• around $200K per day near the top

33. Slide from Samurai International Japan
Japanese Market
Game Publishers like DeNA
and GREE each have over a
hundred of apps on each
store (many on the top list)
Game publishers are the most effective
monetizers. Not only in Japan but
throughout the world. It’ll be no surprise
to industry insiders that 9 of the top 10
publishers by monthly revenues on iOS and
Google Play are game publishers. In fact,
the only exceptions to that rule are Apple
on iOS and NAVER on Google Play (Maker
of popular social networking app LINE).

34. In terms of revenue of
Top Grossing App:
As of Jan 2013:
iOS in-app Purchase
Top 1st -5th apps “each” gets
150K-300K THB per day. (5-10KUSD)
(We have 2 on the list)
The number are growing from
75K - 150K per day same period last year.
How do we know? Been there done that..still there.
From my source, the number are almost the same for both iPad/iPhone in
Thailand
Thai Market
Our two best apps at #1 and #4

35. The Supercell Story
• October 2012: Supercell pegged its daily revenues at
$500,000
• The growth curve steepens: With daily revenue now at
$2.4 million, representing growth of almost 400 percent.
• They have already surpassed its 2012 revenues of $100
million, with $179 million in first quarter 2013.
• Supercell is already at a run-rate of more than $800
million for 2013 and could reach $1 billion.
• They only have 2 games on one platform (iOS).
And that’s what I think good companies are making on these things until:

36. Wanna try?
I'm not an expert but here are
some tips from my personal
experience.

37. Speed Wins
in hiring, development, design, releases, biz dev
Be Agile
and worry about scaling later

38. Outsource what you can
Always Outsource Complexity

39. To all startups out there
“Respect Everyone, Fear No One”

40. And please don’t forget to
“Enjoy the Ride”
Thank you