The ink's still drying on Tapjoy's trilateral deal with CocoaChina and Gfan.

The mobile monetisation platform's move on China sees it partnering with a major publisher and one of the region's largest Android app stores – but what does this mean for Western developers?

To find out, we spoke to Tapjoy CEO Mihir Shah, who explained how this deal would affect Tapjoy's partners around the world.

Pocket Gamer: How will Western mobile developers benefit from Tapjoy's new trilateral partnership?

Mihir Shah: Tapjoy now has partners that will benefit Western mobile developers looking to launch and distribute their apps on Android in China.

CocoaChina is a leading publisher in China and has one of the most successful games in the market, Fishing Joy, and more recently, Fishing Joy II.

If developers are looking to publish their Android games in China, as long as they working with either Tapjoy or Cocoachina to monetise or publish their apps, they will get access to this featured section of the appstore within Gfan.

This will be important to help drive visibility for their applications to Chinese users and drive downloads of their app because of this promotional placement.

In its announcement, Tapjoy suggested there would be cross-promotion opportunities between Chinese and 'foreign' applications. How will these work? Won't there be cultural and language differences to overcome?

There are distinct differences in terms of users' expectations and gaming experiences between China and the West.

Through this partnership we can facilitate good Western applications so they are better placed to address the growing opportunity of the Chinese free to play market.

Developers will be able to leverage CocoaChina's local understanding of users' behaviour, Tapjoy's market coverage and Gfan's huge installed base.

Jointly we will provide our knowledge to Western application developers on localising not only the language, but also the game mechanics, accurate market targeting, distribution for ease of discovery and the most appropriate way to monetise.

Consumers can also more easily discover a good mix of quality Chinese and western applications in the featured game section.

What was it about CocoaChina and Gfan that made them attractive partners?

Cocoachina operates the largest app developer community in China and is also a very successful game developer.

Tapjoy wanted to work with leading developers that have strong IP, as well as broad reach into the developer community within China to extend our value exchange model.

As for Gfan, they are one of the leading android appstores in China. As you know, Google Play does not currently work in China - so there is a highly fragmented independent appstore market consisting of several hundred appstores.

Gfan is one of the biggest and reaches a large user base is looking for Android apps.

It was a natural fit to work with them to promote our apps through their store, as well as provide a way for the developers listing their apps in their stores to be able to further monetise through our value exchange model.

Currently, the Android market is growing much faster than iOS in China, but the monetisation is not as high on Android as it is on iOS, so our value proposition – which helps increase monetisation - is very attractive to Android developers.

What scale of opportunity does the Chinese market offer overall, and how do you see Western developers exploiting that opportunity in the future?

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently released its June 2012 telecom industry statistics with a total mobile installed base of 1.052B.

With the introduction of a series of lower cost Android smartphones into the market, this will certainly accelerate the demand for value added mobile services, in which mobile gaming always tops the list.

The Chinese gaming market is unique in terms of distribution, user acquisition, behaviour and monetisation; a successful entrance into such a market has never been simple and straight forward.

These challenges are the key drivers for setting up such strong strategic collaboration between Tapjoy, CocoaChina and Gfan.

A ground-breaking combination of global and local knowledge offers a powerful platform for Western developers looking to enter the Chinese market.

Back in May 2012, Tapjoy announced a $5 million fund for Asian developers. Has that money been allocated now, and have those investments begun to bear fruit?

Earlier in May we announced the $5M Asia Fund, and this week at CGDC our VP of Developer Relations Christine Lee announced the first 3 developers we are partnering with through the fund: Wistone, Red Infinity and Digital Cloud.

These are all leading developers in China that are leveraging Tapjoy's powerful global distribution and experience in monetising free-to-play virtual currency games to further accelerate the growth of their games.
Thanks to Mihir for his time.