A case study on launching apps in Thailand by Natavudh "Moo" Pungcharoenpong, Co-Founder & CEO, Ookbee

1. The App Economy in Thailand
Web Wednesday Thailand 12.0

2. +
Ookbee by the Numbers
Thailand’s #1 e-book store
88% market share
* That was in October. with new countries/iPad mini,
We now add 8K+ a day and have 2.9M users
TOP 5 everyday
Grossing Apps
for the past
on Thai App Store
500 days

3. Ookbee Team
Developers
• Founded: Mid 2010 /The team has grown from 5 to over 40 staff
• We are at Month 25 and have been profitable since month 7
• Sep 2012 Ookbee raised US$2 million in funding from Shin Corporation
Content Team

4. App Store Publishing

5. Number of Apps
As of Jan 2013
iPhone
750k on iOS
Play
700k on Play
iPad
150k on WP
Amazon
WP
BlackBerry
40k on Win8

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

8. +
Thailand: Monetization Case Study
Thai UI
Eng UI
Sep 2012: App Annie

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

11. Top Countries - Downloads/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

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

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

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

15. 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

16. +
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

17. Successful Publishing
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)
it will take Ookbee 4 Months for our next 1 Million

18. Launching App in the Local Market
My Personal Experience

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

20. +
Ookbee App Eco
50+ of our 150+ apps on
Top list!
Out of 200K Apps, We
are No.1-5 Top Grossing
for the past 500 Days!!
Beats Zinio and all
popular games! Angry
Bird?

21. Just Another App in App Store :(
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”
*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

22. 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”

23. 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.

24. Let’s make some money!
App Monetization

25. 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)

26. In-App Purchase

27. +
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)

28. 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.

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

30. 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
Since October 2012, Japan Google play Revenue Top US

31. US Market
• If you make it to the top 10 US Top Grossing Apps : around
2M THB per day
• How do we know?
• Temple run has reportedly earned $7,000,000 over a span of 5 months, so that roughly brings
the average to $46,000 (1.4M THB/Day) per day near the #1 grossing spot
• Chair Entertainment, the subsidiary of Epic that developed Infinity Blade confirmed that the
game had had 5 million downloads and generated $20 million in net revenue. Apple said Infinity
Blade is ranked #9 on the US top grossing list for the whole of 2011. So we can estimate that
around 1.6M THB/day revenue is made in the Top 10 US Appstore
• In 2012 the average iOS revenue grow at least another 50%

32. 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).
Slide from Samurai International Japan

33. Thai Market
In terms of revenue of
Top Grossing App:
As of Jan 2013:
Our two best apps at #1 and #4
iOS in-app Purchase
Top 1st -5th apps “each” gets
150K-300K THB per day.
(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

34. Our Revenue:
Apple VS Android

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

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

37. Outsource what you can
Always Outsource Complexity

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

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