Major players keen to break into Chinese market

China is the second-largest market for Apple Inc's iOS App Stores. Of the country's 385 million mobile-game players, 22 percent play via iOS, while 71 percent play on the Android platform, according to a report published by Tencent in the first quarter of the year.

The popularity of mobile devices has encouraged many middle-aged and elderly people to play mobile games, and as a result developers such as Tencent have released easy-to-play games, such as Plane Shooting War Maze, which are targeted at the mass audience on the instant-messaging platform WeChat.

The Chinese are also among those ranked as "most willing" to pay for games. "Although China is not the top country in terms of conversion rate (the percentage of people who pay for games), it still ranks at a high level," said Chen Qi, chief operative officer of FunPlus Game, a publisher of mobile and social games.