The next big trend in South Korea’s portal industry may be mobile content platforms; “No company yet knows the key to success in the mobile platform service business”

August 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Naver joins Kakao, Daum in mobile content platform race

Shin Ji-hye, The Korea Herald/ANN, Seoul | Business | Thu, August 15 2013, 6:12 AM

The next big trend in South Korea’s portal industry may be mobile content platforms. With Naver, the nation’s top Internet portal operator, slated to launch its mobile content platform soon, the race is shaping up to be a three-way competition between Naver, Kakao and Daum Communications. The Naver Post service is expected to provide a platform where user-created content can be shared on mobile handsets, according to industry sources on Tuesday. Currently, a closed beta test is being operated through the Android application. “No company yet knows the key to success in the mobile platform service business. However, we should continue as it is clear that user demand is growing. Whether the service will be provided for free will be decided based on the beta test,” said Lee So-young, a spokesperson for Naver.Kakao Page, the first of its kind, was unveiled in April by Kakao, the No. 1 mobile messenger in South Korea. The online distribution platform allows content creators to sell their music, videos and other digital content to Kakao Talk’s 100 million users.

Its performance, however, did not seem to live up to expectations. One content developer said, “I earned some 15,000 won (US$13) in sales for two days through Kakao Page. Still, my sales ranked 20th on the list.”

“The disappointing performance seems largely from users’ unfamiliarity with a culture of paid content. However, we will continue to stick to the pay-per-use system as we initially sought to create an ecosystem where content developers get the right prices. Kakao Page will be revamped around September with better services and a simpler payment system,” said Kakao spokesperson Lee Ki-yeon.

Daum Communications, the operator of South Korea’s second-most visited portal, also joined the race by unveiling its mobile content service Story Ball on Monday.

“Story Ball will not be open-market where any individual can upload his own content. Instead, only selected creators will provide content in cooperation with Story Ball planners to offer quality content,” said Choi Moon-hee, a Story TF Team manager at Daum Communications.

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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