Kakao Piccoma's Q2 Transaction Amount Hits 23.2 Billion Yen... 25 Consecutive Quarters of Growth

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Kakao's Japanese subsidiary Kakao Piccoma has revealed the second-quarter performance and future plans of the global comics and novels platform Piccoma.

On the 23rd, Kakao Piccoma announced that the transaction amount of the global comics platform Piccoma, operated by Kakao Piccoma, exceeded 23.2 billion yen (approximately 226 billion KRW) in the second quarter of this year. Since its initial launch in Japan in April 2016, Piccoma's transaction amount has shown growth every quarter.

Earlier, on the 4th of this month, during Kakao's 2022 second-quarter earnings conference call, Kakao Piccoma revealed that Piccoma surpassed 9.5 million monthly active readers this quarter, and its monthly transaction amount exceeded a record high of 8 billion yen (approximately 78 billion KRW).

Optimized for Smartphone Environment... The Background of Steady Growth

Kakao Piccoma cited as factors for Piccoma's continuous growth its thorough market and user analysis, which allowed it to present services and viewing environments aligned with changing trends. At the time of its launch in Japan, Piccoma optimized genres and popular comics provided by leading Japanese publishers, which were in book format, for the smartphone environment. Simultaneously, it aimed to be a comics platform that also serves global webtoons from Korea, Japan, China, and the United States, catering to 'snack culture content users.'

Additionally, Piccoma introduced business models such as episode-based 'chapter segmentation' and 'wait and read for free,' which did not previously exist in Japan, and after establishing itself in the Japanese market, it operates the platform in its own unique way.

Kakao Piccoma continues to expand opportunities for users to encounter comics, webtoons, and novels through various channels. Thanks to improvements in the user environment, including not only mobile-optimized application services but also enhanced readability and convenience of web services, the number of web users has more than doubled.

A Kakao Piccoma official explained, "Within the Japanese digital comics industry, the web-based market is known to be about twice the size of the app-based market, so growth in the web market is also expected."

"Leap to the World's No.1 Comics Platform"

Kakao Piccoma plans to focus on growth this year by advancing the Piccoma service and content library, mainly in Japan and France. Through this, it aims to solidify its position as the world's number one global comics platform.

To this end, a 'Channel' tab was introduced in the Japanese Piccoma app. The 'Channel' is a space where labels belonging to comic publishers providing works to Piccoma can directly post published comic works on the Piccoma platform. This offers comic publishers time and resource savings in building and operating mobile platforms themselves and is expected to have marketing effects by directly introducing selected works to users. Users can meet various themed and story-driven published comics issued by each publisher in real time on Piccoma.

Kakao Piccoma's European subsidiary, 'Piccoma Europe,' launched Piccoma in France through an Android app in March this year. Subsequently, it was sequentially introduced on iOS (released in May) and web (released in June), showing stable growth. In July this year, as the main sponsor for the first time at France's largest cultural event 'Japan Expo,' which celebrated its 20th anniversary, it built recognition and consensus among local users and industry stakeholders.

A Kakao Piccoma official stated, "Kakao Piccoma will connect works and users through digital technology to provide users with the emotion and joy of enjoying content and contribute to the development of the global comics industry."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.