In Q1 2025, the Southeast Asian social app market witnessed a dramatic scene: Hifami, which had been online for only 3 months, surpassed competitors that had heavily invested in AI matching algorithms by a wide margin, with its daily active users (DAU) exceeding 2 million, thanks to 16 built-in retro H5 mini-games. Its user profile shows that women over 35 account for 47% — a group long ignored by traditional social platforms, who became the main force behind the product's growth due to the empathetic experience brought by light games such as "virtual flower planting" and "pixel puzzles". Coincidentally, Pookie, a virtual social platform, has built "collaborative social" scenarios through H5 games, with users averaging 83 monthly sessions, 4.2 times that of pure chat products. These phenomena confirm a key trend: as the ZOOM generation (born between 1995-2010) becomes the main force in socializing, their demand for products is upgrading from "quick matching" to "sustained emotional resonance", and H5 instant games have become the shortest path to achieve this goal.

When mentioning the Middle East, the classic images of vast deserts, ancient civilizations, and abundant oil still come to mind. However, under the continuous impact of the digital wave, an unprecedented "new gold rush" is unfolding in this land – overseas Middle Eastern voice chat socializing, whose vitality and value are growing day by day.

How niche dark horse WePlay leveraged "gaming + social" to capture the global market

Southeast Asia has a population of over 680 million, with more than 480 million internet users. The social media penetration rate exceeds 70%, making it one of the regions with the highest social media penetration in the world. The user base in Southeast Asia is youthful, with a high acceptance of new technologies and products, and excellent online habits, with average daily internet usage exceeding the global average. These factors make Southeast Asia an ideal market for social apps to expand.

In 2024, driven by factors such as market demand, resource acquisition, brand globalization, and risk diversification, Chinese enterprises continued to seek global expansion. This report summarizes the performance, investment trends, challenges, and policy environment of Chinese enterprises entering the European and American markets in 2024.