Comment by sungeuns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sungeuns | Hacker News Reader

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I'm Korean so let me explain about the company. Daum KaKao is combined company of Daum communications & KaKao. Daum Communications is an internet company, mainly focused on internet portal service like Yahoo!. (It is second largest portal in Korea, the first is Naver) KaKao made a KaKaoTalk, which is dominant messaging app in South Korea. Naver, which is the number one internet company in Korea has both of internet portal and messaging app (LINE, which is dominant messaging app in Japan and Taiwan) so Daum and KaKao are merged in 2014. Daum KaKao now focusing on mobile service since it has dominant messaging app in Korea. The reason why they acquired Path is they want to enter Southeast Asia market, which Naver and Tencent WeChat already have largest portion. (Daum KaKao said that they acquired Path because of Indonesian market. Path has many users in Indonesia)

LINE is also the main app in Thailand.

How come KaKaoTalk is dominant in Korea when Naver (LINE) is the bigger company? If you know.

AFAIK, they simply entered the market first and gained a large user base.

Yes, LINE already has many users in Spain and other Southeast Asia countries. KakaoTalk is launched at 2010, before the smartphone market is matured. At the first time KaKaoTalk was made, Samsung and LG (both of them are Korean tech giant) dramatically produce many Android device, but there's no wonderful messaging app. (WhatsApp is not an free model, and other messaging app's quality it not that good) After KaKaotalk have gained lots of popularity, Naver made two messaging app named NaverTalk and LINE. NaverTalk based on Korean market and they failed since KakaoTalk already occupy all the smartphone. But LINE is based on Japan and they succeed, so Naver threw out NaverTalk and focused on LINE. At this time, Daum (before merged with KaKao) made messaging app named MyPeople. They have many users in Korea, but didn't make a profit because of KaKaoTalk. And MyPeople also removed from the market after Daum merged with Kakao.

I see, thanks.

Very helpful. Thanks for the explanation.

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