South Korean leading search company ‘Naver’ said its Q4 profit rose 5 percent from a year earlier. Net profit came to 141.5 billion won (US$118 million) in that period, compared with the 129.6 billion won a year earlier. Advertisement sales from its mobile search engine platform have been the main revenue streamline for its quarterly performance, accounting for 42 percent of the total advertisement sales. While sales from domestic advertisements moved up 15.2 percent, that…

크라우드 펀딩 플랫폼 텀블벅이 카카오톡에 투자한 실리콘밸리의 DCM과 네이버, 스트롱벤처스로부터 17억 규모의 시리즈 A 투자를 받았다. ‘스타트업 바이블’의 저자이기도 한 배기홍 스트롱벤처스 공동대표는 “텀블벅의 기술과 개발을 중시하는 회사 문화가 마음에 들었다.”며 “기술력을 기반으로 새로운 문화를 창조하려는 회사의 방향이 이전부터 생각했던 크라우드 펀딩 개념과 잘 맞았다”고 투자 이유를 밝혔다. 2텀블벅은 창작자들이 새로운 시도를 할 때 필요한 자금을 모집하고 팬들과 연결될 수 있는 기술적인 환경을 만들어 왔다. 선댄스영화제 대상을 받은 영화 <지슬>과 작년 독립영화계의…

  배달음식 주문앱 요기요(대표 나제원)가 검색포털 사이트 네이버(대표 김상헌)와 상생협력을 위해 양해각서(MOU)를 체결했다고 밝혔다. 이번 체결을 통해 요기요와 네이버는 요기요의 컨텐츠를 적극 활용한 상호 협력관계를 구축하게 됐다.  MOU 체결과 함께 양사는 협력을 강화해 국내 인터넷과 모바일 시장의 동반 성장 및 소상공인 상생을 위해 노력할 계획이다. 요기요 박지희 부사장은 “이번 협력을 통해 소비자들에게 요기요의 정확한 배달음식 컨텐츠를 보다 다양한 플랫폼을 통해 편리하게 제공하고, 가맹업주들에게는 추가 주문을 창출함과 동시에 실질적인 혜택을 누릴 수 있도록…

Naver, Korea’s largest search portal and parent company of the popular LINE messeging application, has sustained double-digit growth in the third quarter of this year The primary reason for this is strong revenue growth in overseas markets. The company posted sales of around $700 million for the third quarter of this year, up 22.3% on the same period last year. Operating profit for the quarter is estimated at around $188 million, also…

Last December, Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures, identified 39 software startups that have reached valuations of over $1 Billion, and grouped them under the moniker of The Unicorn Club, in her landmark TechCrunch post. Since then, software startups with valuations of over $1 Billion are being commonly called “Unicorns” in Silicon Valley and worldwide. On the conclusion of a second very successful beGLOBAL 2014, where ten Korean startups featured in Silicon Valley, we…

After a period of rampant speculations it has been reported that Line Corp.,which now boasts almost half a billion users, has filed confidentially for an initial offering in the U.S. It is expected that the company will seek a dual-listing in New York and Tokyo. This, according to a report our on Bloomberg. While the details have not been released publicly by Line, it is believed that Morgan Stanley (MS) is managing the listing…

Microsoft recently announced that it intends to fully enter the Korean internet search market later this year. This does not seem wise in a market that has been utterly dominated by Korean players for over a decade. Yahoo withdrew from the market after a fifteen year failed push into Korea. Google has fared a little better, having now climbed to around 10% – 15% market share, but it has been a long…

I have been following the story of Kakao Corp closely over the last two years and its been an interesting ride so far, due to get much more so with the merger announced this week on betech.asia. While ‘many’ are confused about the benefits of a rising Kakao merging with Daum Communications, an internet portal in decline, I believe that there are a few key factors that ‘many’ are missing. Kakao Corp. – A Brief Intro: Kakao Corp…

Kakao Corp, this week has announced an agreement to buy Korea’s second largest domestic Internet-portal operator Daum Communications in an all-stock deal. It is hoped that the deal will boost the merged entity’s presence in on both Web and mobile services. The deal comes at a time when tech analysts are heralding the end of messaging 2.0, as most independent messaging services which have seen enormous growth recently will now have merged or been…

There are two wars tearing apart Korea at the moment. One involves flying missiles and deadly danger, and the other is a tech battle between cute characters. While the south has returned fire today against the North for firing missiles into disputed ocean off the coast of the peninsula, Line and KakaoTalk are battling against each other in a cold war that is developing between the two mobile messaging apps.   LINE…

Groupon recently announced liquidation of all assets of Groupon Korea, and a plan to focus all its efforts to promote its recent acquisition Ticket Monster (TMON) in Asia’s third largest e-commerce market. Groupon now joins the long list of global companies, which have failed to capture market share in South Korea. Recently (December 2012), Yahoo also shut down its Korean operations, as profitability became an issue in South Korea. South Korea is…

Between 1997 and 2001, 3 web portal giants were born in Korea in a mini .com boom that mirrored similar in the west. Daum, Naver and Nate utilized the incredible IT infrastructure that had been built through a massive, strategic cash injection from the Korean government that aimed (and succeeded) in powering Korea to the status of one of the most progressive technology hubs in the world. This legacy still prevails and…

A Google spokesperson has reached out to TechInAsia who also posted this news, and pointed out that “it hasn’t done or offered any of the things described in this post.” References  were initially sourced from ZDnet Korea (http://www.zdnet.co.kr/news/news_view.asp?artice_id=20140219145110). They have since taken down the articles used as reference for this article. We apologize for the inaccuracy of this post. Korea has long been a brand-obsessed shopping nation. Now Google aims to assist up-and-coming app…

Mobile Shopping Users In Korea Exceed 20M For First Time A recent survey has shown that Koreans using mobile shopping applications has grown such that there are now more mobile shoppers than there are KakaoGame players in Korea. According to Rankey.com who conducted the survey, the number of shopping app users totaled 21.63M, as of January 2014. This figure is 2.7M higher than the number of KakaoGame Play users and represents a…

I have published a number of stories about Google, Naver and Daum, the not so fair battle-ground of Korean internet, but this piece is also very worth while sharing, as it goes into great depth about the issue and also suggests that finally Google may be on the rise. The Korean hit drama series “Respond, 1994” which went off the air two weeks ago after attracting a huge following on cable TV,…

Naver and Daum have made a tentative decision to shell out millions of dollars as a form of self-penance for abusing their market dominance in Korea’s internet portal industry, according to the Fair Trade Commission yesterday. As we have reported several times recently their has been concern voiced about the increasing dominance of the two companies in the Korean internet search market. The money will be spent in ways that benefit Internet…

Last week saw Lee Hae-jin, CEO of NAVER Corp., the country’s largest Internet portal operator, ranked No. 1 among Korean stock-rich business owners, in terms of valuation gains on his stock holdings. The combined value of Lee’s shares rose to 1.1 trillion won (US$1.24 billion), more than a two-fold increase, from 507.4 billion won, posted at the end of December 2012, according to data released by market research firm FnGuide. Global Ambitions:…

네이버, 스팸 전화 필터링 서비스 제공 대만 기반 스타트업 고고룩 180억에 인수 네이버가 발신자 확인 서비스 및 스팸 전화 서비스 앱인 ‘후즈콜(WhosCall)’로 유명한 대만 기반 스타트업 고고룩(Gogolook)을 1,760만 달러(약 180억)에 인수했다. 현재 후즈콜은 월간 120만 명의 액티브 유저를 보유하고 있으며 6억 개의 전화번호 데이터를 보유하고 있다. 후즈콜의 설립자인 제프 쿠오(Jeff Kuo)와 에드가 치우(Edgar Chiu)는 대만 내 네이버 앱 개발센터의 최고 운영자를 맡게 된다. 현재 세계 모바일 메신저 시장에서 중국의 위챗, 미국의 왓츠앱과…

As Korean President Park Geun-hye pushes to promote fair competition in the Korean economy (currently dominated by a small number of family-run conglomerates), the country’s number one internet company, Naver, has been coming under fire again for allegedly abusing its power.   Startup “Memo This” developed a service that allows users to stick memos on any website for use by anyone who vistits the site at a later date. The theory is…

The Background For those who don’t know it, the internet situation in South Korea is very different from what you might expect. Most impressively, Google, only claims around a 2% share of the search market. So who services this population of 50M, one of the most connected and tech savvy in the World? Naver, a subsidiary of Korea’s largest internet company NHN Corp, has controlled over 70% of the Korean search market…