Japan has the highest average revenue per user for its top 30 mobile games compared to any other market.

The data comes from App Annie, which has released a report on the ARPU from Japan, China, US, South Korea and UK.

It found that Japan had nearly twice the ARPU across its top 30 mobile games on iOS than China, and more than twice as high as the US.

In fact, ARPU across these games was over six times higher in Japan than in the UK.

China is a rapidly growing market in terms of revenues, however, with its ARPU having risen to almost ten times what it was in Q1 2014.

Interestingly, China also outperformed the US.

RPG FTW

The main categories driving these revenues are strategy and RPG titles, especially Game of War, which has managed a number one spot in both the US and UK, and number five in Japan.

It should be noted though that a small subset of games are the main drivers of growth. App Annie said it is important evaluate country and category level data when deciding which markets have the highest monetisation potential.

Much of the revenue for China and Japan is driven by local games. For example, Monster Strike is one of the top grossing games globally despite only really having an audience in Japan.

Card-based RPG Sengoku Enbu KIZNA meanwhile had an ARPU "considerably above" the country's average and made the top ten grossing despite a relatively small number of MAUs.

App Annie said all five countries analysed in its report had experienced solid growth between Q2 2014 and Q2 2016 in the average monthly APRU of their top 30 games.

You can read App Annie's full report on its Insights blog.