SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea’s top mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp. said Monday it will take over a controlling stake in LOEN Entertainment Inc., expanding its business scope to cover music streaming. Under the plan, Kakao will purchase a 76.4 percent stake in the country’s leading provider of music streaming and download [...]
SEOUL, Jan.4 (Korea Bizwire) – With Korean internet giants Naver and Kakao bolstering their mobile real estate service offerings, competition is becoming fierce. The mobile real estate brokerage market, which has been lead by startups like ZigBang, is expected to grow significantly this year. According to industry reports, Naver has launched the official version of [...]
SEOUL, Dec.17 (Korea Bizwire) – Daum Kakao, the operator of Kakao Taxi, has reported that the accumulated number of Kakao Taxi calls exceeded 50 million on December 13. According to company officials, the Kakao Taxi service that started on March 31 had received one million calls only a month and a half after its launch. [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 30 (Korea Bizwire) - Kakao Bank, an Internet-only bank consortium led by Kakao Corp., said Monday that it is planning to begin operations in the second half of next year to lead the unprecedented market by making use of its millions of mobile chat application users. Along with the K-Bank team headed by KT [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 30 (Korea Bizwire) - Kakao Bank led by online portal giant Kakao Corp. and KT Corp.-initiated K-Bank have been picked as the operators of South Korea’s first-ever Internet bank on Sunday. It is the first time in 23 years that a new commercial bank has opened in the country’s banking industry. Two big IT firms — Kakao and KT — won the rights to operate onlinebanks, beating the Interpark-led I-Bank consortium. As the operator [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 23 (Korea Bizwire) – Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea’s most widely used messenger app KakaoTalk, launched a premium taxi service earlier this month, but it had to start with only foreign brands as talks with the country’s largest homegrown automaker fell apart due to differences over contract terms. On Nov. 3, [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – Daum Kakao has announced that it will be expanding its News Funding crowd funding service into a new service called Story Funding. Story Funding allows creators of content other than news such as books, music, movies and new technologies to receive funding. The company’s goal is to expand its [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – Kakao, who earlier refused an interception warrant from an investigative agency, changed its stance after a year, and has decided to cooperate. Although concerns over the occurrence of cyber asylum are stirring, officials are predicting that there won’t be a huge drop in the number of users. Kakao insists [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s market for mobile advertisements is expected to surpass the 1 trillion won (US$849 million) mark this year on the back of the country’s high smartphone penetration, data showed Friday. The market size is estimated to reach 1.05 trillion won this year, which will mark a 27.2 percent [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 1 (Korea Bizwire) — When Kakao Corp. launched its mobile chat application KakaoTalk in South Korea in early 2010, what lured users most was the fact that it was free. Until then, sending and receiving text messages via a phone had been considered something that you had to pay for. The instant messenger, [...]