SEOUL, May 4 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said Wednesday its first-quarter net profit jumped by more than fivefold from a year earlier, due to one-off gains from the disposal of its stocks in a local crypto exchange operator. Net income reached 1.32 trillion won (US$1 [...]
SEOUL, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Brain, an artificial intelligence (AI) unit of South Korean tech giants Kakao Corp., said Tuesday it had unveiled an AI model designed to create images from text descriptions through the open-source community GitHub. The RQ-Transformer, consisting of 3.9 billion parameters, is a text-to-image AI model that learned 30 [...]
SEOUL, April 13 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s financial regulator on Wednesday approved a digital insurance business by Kakao Corp. in a move that could heat up competition in the fledging digital insurance market. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) made the decision, saying the operator of the country’s leading mobile messenger KakaoTalk has satisfied all [...]
SEOUL, April 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said Wednesday it will spend 300 billion won (US$246 million) over the next five years to support small business partners. The project, as part of its long-term strategy named Beyond Korea, is aimed at assisting business owners so [...]
SEOUL, March 25 (Korea Bizwire) — The Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL), a state-run railway operator, said Thursday it will share important information on subway train operations with KakaoMetro subway navigation app starting from Thursday. In case subway train operations are suspended due to accidents or natural disasters, KORAIL will provide emergency notice on the affected [...]
SEOUL, March. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Shares in South Korean tech giants Kakao Corp. and Naver Corp. jumped on Thursday amid expectations that the new government would ease platform regulations. The stock price of Naver rose by 8.54 percent from the previous trading day to 330,500 won, while that of Kakao jumped by 8.58 percent [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The nominee for new CEO of Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, vowed on Thursday to boost the company’s stock price back to over 150,000 won (US$125) within his term following a sharp plunge amid a series of mishaps. Namkoong Whon was named to [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Mobility Corp.’s taxi-hailing service is selective in choosing passengers depending on their destinations, the Seoul metropolitan government said Wednesday. The city government carried out a fact-finding ‘mystery shopper’ test during the period from October to November last year after complaints poured in from citizens having difficulty calling taxis, [...]
SEOUL, Feb. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, said Friday that its net profit for 2021 surged nearly tenfold on-year on the back of robust growth of its e-commerce services based on its messenger platform amid the pandemic. Net profit reached 1.64 trillion won (US$1.4 billion) [...]
SEOUL, Jan. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — The local market for middle-mile delivery, a business-to-business (B2B) logistics that delivers goods from factories to logistics warehouses or sales outlets by truck, is emerging as a new battleground for mobility platforms. T Map Mobility, a mobility unit under telecom operator SK Telecom Co., acquired a 100 percent stake [...]