Webcomic Platforms Expand into Global Market #2 - Sweet after Bitter and Irony. KakaoPage Expands into Japanese Market

Daum Kakao is a huge Internet company that merges Daum Communications with Kakao in 2014. It is newly created by experts of search and mobile, creates a new synergy and is anticipated that it creates the bigger synergy in future.

It progresses a variety of services, but two services for cartoon, the existing Daum Webtoon (Previous name of service: Daum World of Cartoons) and KakaoPage are maintained. To be exact, it operates two services to create the more synergies through the strategy that webcomics on Daum Webtoon are disclosed to KakaoPage.

Daum Webtoon is a meaningful platform that opened Korean webcomic market. It has serialized the prominent webcomics such as <Love Story> by Kang Full and <Incomplete Life> by Tae-ho Yoon, and a variety of high-level webcomics are still serialized on Daum Webtoon. The webcomics on Daum Webtoon are simultaneously serialized on KakaoPage that faithfully distributes webcomics from a variety of agencies and studios.

Especially, Daum Kakao's subsidiary Podotree operates KakaoPage, and <Daum Webtoon Company> operating Daum Webtoon is incorporated into Podotree's subsidiary under organization structure and provides webcomic services.

[Figure] KakaoPage – Operational structure of Daum Webtoon

Podotree performs its active walking into the oversea markets after successfully attracting the investment of KRW 125 billion in December 2016. KakaoPage service of Podotree achieved the average daily sales KRW 300 million and the best daily sales KRW 500 million, and total enterprise value of Podotree was evaluated as KRW 500 billion through a merger with Daum Webtoon. That's why Podotree received the investment of KRW 125 billion from a global investor Anchor Equity Partners. The average daily sales of Podotree were KRW 500 million in 2017. (National Assembly Forum on November 17, 2017)

Kakao established Kakao Japan in 2011 to expand Kakaotalk into overseas market, but ended up in a failure for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, Kakao Japan has continued to maintain a corporation in spite of cumulative deficit every year. Is it sweet after bitter? Kakao Japan ended up spreading a digital comics service <Piccoma> in Japan. It went straight to the most promising platform at once by challenging the competition with a cartoon in Japan that is called the country from which comics have originated. This situation was strangely ironic. It was a strange situation that Kakao Japan achieved an unexpected success as the webcomic platform in Japan where Kakao expanded into to bring Kakaotalk to a success with a messenger service.   

Daum Kakao started a webcomic service <Piccoma> through Japanese corporation Kakao Japan to expand into Japanese market in April 2016. Piccoma successfully sat in Japanese market by applying Korean webcomic business models that are used at no charge after waiting to Japan. It goes straight to the upper rank at once with an aggressive marketing from 2017 and retains the explosive growth by exceeding a million MAUs in March, 1.4 million MAUs in May and 2.5 million MAUs in September.

Jae-yong Kim, CEO of Kakao Japan, introduced the rearranged outcomes of Piccoma service in Japan at the world webcomic forum in December 2017. Piccoma served 1,390 comics as of December 11, 2017. 40 of them are Korean webcomics and 1,350 are Japanese published cartoons. 

The webcomics introduced to Japan through Piccoma are the known ones such as <Incomplete Life> by by Tae-ho Yoon, <Love Alarm> by Kye-young Chon and <Dokgo> by Meen & Seunghoon Baek, and many excellent ones verified a quality through agencies and platforms.

Some people raise a question that expanding only 40 webcomics into Japan makes them think that Piccoma is a webcomic platform, but only 40 Korean webcomics make a big profit in the platform such as Netflix Originals. The sales of Korean webcomics in Piccoma are as follow.

They achieved about KRW 2 billion in the third quarter of 2017 and expected to achieve about KRW 2.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Like this, Japanese webcomic platform <Piccoma> of Kakao Japan is the product of sweet after bitter and certifies an irony that life is a mystery. I wonder how Japanese people feel about Korean webcomic platform (strictly speaking, digital comics platform) that plants itself as digital comics service in Japan that is called the country from which comics have originated.