THE BRIDGE

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Kakao Japan enhances its Item Store with prominent local content partner

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See the original story in Japanese. Kakao Japan, the Japan subsidiary of Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese karaoke and mobile content provider Xing (pronounced ek-sing) to provide stickers and themes in the app’s Item Store. The distribution partnership will start on August 1st. In the Item Store, Kakao Talk users are allowed to download free and paid stickers or smartphone themes, which include animated to talking stickers of webtoons, celebrity icons, and animation characters. Xing launched a ring-tone marketplace called ‘Pokemero Joysound’ back in 1999. Since then, the company has been providing a variety of mobile content to feature phones and smartphones. For Kakao Japan, the partnership is intended to enhance its Item Store with the Japanese provider’s content. KakaoTalk has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide, and its gaming platform KakaoGame has been showing good numbers both in revenue and user growth. In addition, the messaging company has also released a number of more vertical apps such as KakaoStory and KakaoPoll. It will be interesting to see if the company can acquire more users and become more of an app distributor as Line is doing.

kakaotalk-itemstore

See the original story in Japanese.

Kakao Japan, the Japan subsidiary of Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese karaoke and mobile content provider Xing (pronounced ek-sing) to provide stickers and themes in the app’s Item Store. The distribution partnership will start on August 1st.

In the Item Store, Kakao Talk users are allowed to download free and paid stickers or smartphone themes, which include animated to talking stickers of webtoons, celebrity icons, and animation characters.

Xing launched a ring-tone marketplace called ‘Pokemero Joysound’ back in 1999. Since then, the company has been providing a variety of mobile content to feature phones and smartphones. For Kakao Japan, the partnership is intended to enhance its Item Store with the Japanese provider’s content.

kakao talk
Kakao Japan office

KakaoTalk has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide, and its gaming platform KakaoGame has been showing good numbers both in revenue and user growth. In addition, the messaging company has also released a number of more vertical apps such as KakaoStory and KakaoPoll.

It will be interesting to see if the company can acquire more users and become more of an app distributor as Line is doing.

Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee: Creating a mobile social platform

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This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013. At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka today, Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee, explained a little about the rise of the KakaoTalk mobile chat application in Korea and around Asia. Sirgoo was joined on stage by Gen Miyazawa, the head of search at Yahoo Japan, Kakao’s partner in Japan. To date the KakaoTalk app has seen over 86 million downloads, including 10 million here in Japan. Sirgoo explained that Kakao has over 29 million daily unique views, and more than 4.8 billion messages are exchanged each day. Perhaps more important than those metrics are the revenue figures that Sigoo mentioned. He says that in 2012 the company hit $42 million in total revenue, turning a profit of $6.5 million. Most of that revenue comes from their platform business, specifically games and social commerce, as well as ads. But he noted that this is just the beginning and that this social layer can stimulate growth in spaces like e-commerce, for example, showing friends what you want to buy. Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa was sitting in the front row (having spoken in a session earlier in the day) and…

sirgoo-lee-kakao

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Fukuoka 2013.

At B Dash Camp 2013 in Fukuoka today, Kakao CEO Sirgoo Lee, explained a little about the rise of the KakaoTalk mobile chat application in Korea and around Asia. Sirgoo was joined on stage by Gen Miyazawa, the head of search at Yahoo Japan, Kakao’s partner in Japan.

To date the KakaoTalk app has seen over 86 million downloads, including 10 million here in Japan. Sirgoo explained that Kakao has over 29 million daily unique views, and more than 4.8 billion messages are exchanged each day.

Perhaps more important than those metrics are the revenue figures that Sigoo mentioned. He says that in 2012 the company hit $42 million in total revenue, turning a profit of $6.5 million. Most of that revenue comes from their platform business, specifically games and social commerce, as well as ads.

But he noted that this is just the beginning and that this social layer can stimulate growth in spaces like e-commerce, for example, showing friends what you want to buy.

Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa was sitting in the front row (having spoken in a session earlier in the day) and Sirgoo acknowledged that they have a few things that Kakao could take away from watching how Line operates:

We have to learn more from Morikawa-san in terms of global business. We are very local in that 70% of our users are in Korea. It’s difficult to expand beyond Korea. We at Kakao are taking a different approach. […] We’re partnering with Yahoo Japan here, and we’d like to partner with local partners in other regions who know those regions.

This is an interesting contrast with Line, who expands in a different manner, observing where they do well and then flying in to do business there.

The paths of these two mobile chat giants have largely mirrored each other to date, with each one dominating their respective local markets. But with their somewhat differing philosophies on expansion, it will be interesting to see which strategy works best.

KakaoTalk passes 10 million downloads in Japan

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While NHN Japan’s Line is winning the chat application war in Japan by a large margin with over 45 million users [1], KakaoTalk is the likely number two in the nation. Today Kakao Japan announced that the KakaoTalk chat app has surpassed the 10 million downloads mark back on March 24. To mark the occasion, the company will have a week-long campaign where fans can win prizes like a Macbook Air and a Pentax Q10 zoom lens kit. What both KakaoTalk and Line have in common in Japan is that both have chosen to advertise heavily on TV in the country. DeNA’s Comm is perhaps the other notable contender with 5 million users as of this past December. I wouldn’t be surprised if Comm also has about 8 or 9 million users currently, given the frequency of its TV commercials. Back in October of 2012, Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) – the country’s largest web portal – picked up a 50% stake in Kakao Japan. That backing makes KakaoTalk an interesting challenger for Line, even if the competition between the two is not so close right now. Like Line, Kakao Japan heavily features games on its chat platform, with casual titles like…

kakaojapan

While NHN Japan’s Line is winning the chat application war in Japan by a large margin with over 45 million users [1], KakaoTalk is the likely number two in the nation. Today Kakao Japan announced that the KakaoTalk chat app has surpassed the 10 million downloads mark back on March 24. To mark the occasion, the company will have a week-long campaign where fans can win prizes like a Macbook Air and a Pentax Q10 zoom lens kit.

What both KakaoTalk and Line have in common in Japan is that both have chosen to advertise heavily on TV in the country. DeNA’s Comm is perhaps the other notable contender with 5 million users as of this past December. I wouldn’t be surprised if Comm also has about 8 or 9 million users currently, given the frequency of its TV commercials.

Back in October of 2012, Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) – the country’s largest web portal – picked up a 50% stake in Kakao Japan. That backing makes KakaoTalk an interesting challenger for Line, even if the competition between the two is not so close right now.

kakao talk
Kakao Japan

Like Line, Kakao Japan heavily features games on its chat platform, with casual titles like ZooZoo Bubble, SushiPanic, Tap Tap Blitz, and Pocket Colony.

Both KakaoTalk and Line are expected to make a more intense push for the US market this year, so stay tuned.

If you haven’t yet tried out KakaoTalk, you can get it over on the App Store, on Google Play, or on a number of other platforms.


  1. Line passed 45 million users in Japan back on March 10. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Line Corporation to announce 50 million domestic downloads in the next month or two.  ↩