SEOUL, Sept. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – The battle for AI speaker dominance is about to get heated as Naver and Kakao are sending out their very best “spokespersons” to the marketing front.
According to tech industry insiders, Naver is planning to release its AI speaker “Wave” before the year is up.
Concurrently, Kakao is making preparations for the release of its own product, called the “Kakao Mini”.
What may decide the upcoming confrontation between the two might come down to whether Koreans prefer Naver’s or KakaoTalk’s emoji characters.
Two of the most popular are Naver’s “Brown”, an expressionless brown bear with a tiny physique somehow supporting a disproportionately huge head, or Kakao’s “Ryan”, a maneless, mustard-colored lion who is something of an expressionless stoic itself (and also has a disproportionately large head).
Naver’s Wave will come redesigned to look like the characters while the Kakao Mini will be sold with a tiny Ryan perched onto the top.
Both Naver (Line) and Kakao (KakaoTalk) operate wildly popular mobile instant messaging services. Naver’s eponymous web search engine naver.com is the market leader in South Korea.
Naver Line Friends and Kakao Friends are originally emoji characters that are enormously popular. They are sold in various non-digital forms at Naver and Kakao retail stores in Japan and South Korea.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
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go kakao friends