Kakao Japan’s “Piccoma” grows fast … # 1 in manga and novel app sales worldwide

[미디어SR 권혁주 기자] Kakao’s comic app Piccoma ranked # 1 in monthly sales among all comic and novel apps worldwide in September. Piccoma is a global webtoon, published comic, and web novel services app operated by Kakao’s subsidiary, Kakao Japan.

According to App Annie, a global app search company, Piccoma ranked # 1 in sales of comics and new apps in the world and # 7 in sales of non-game apps in both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

In the third quarter of this year, Piccoma’s transaction amount increased 247% from the same period last year and 46.2% from the previous quarter to approximately 130 billion won.

Kakao said: “This is a result of four years since entering Japan” and “Thanks to propaganda in Japan, the largest comic book market in the world”. The Japanese comic book market is about 5.7 trillion won, which is four to five times bigger than the second and third place in the United States and China.

Piccoma ranked # 1 in non-game app sales for the first time in Japan in July and remained at the top through September, ranking # 4 in all app sales, including games.

It is very rare for general content apps that serve novels and comics to see sales beyond gaming apps. This can be seen as an indicator of the potential of the Japanese digital comic market.

In the Japanese manga market, even today, published manga-focused books and magazines still account for a large percentage.

The digital manga market in Japan is about half of the total manga market, and sales of the digital manga market for the first time last year began to reverse the paper manga market.

Webtoon’s content, which is growing explosively for mobile devices, is still only served by a few companies like Piccoma.

Piccoma’s growth is driven by webtoons, which make a global platform leap with K-story IP

As a result, the amount of webtoon transactions in Piccoma in the third quarter increased by 70.1% compared to the second quarter and by 680% compared to the previous year. Among them, webtoon’s third-quarter transaction is expected to exceed 150 billion won this year, with 58 billion won.

The strong point of Picoma is that it receives high quality IP K-story (intellectual property rights) from the Kakao page of the Kakao community.

In particular, the webtoon of the first season of Kakao Page’s web novel “I Only Level Up”, which was serialized on Piccoma, was viewed by 1.1 million people a day and was recognized for his work and its relevance all over the world.

Alone and Level Up Season 2 Webtoon was serialized on Kakao Page in August and is currently being served by Piccoma.

This shows the trend that Japanese manga readers are getting used to the webtoon viewing environment, which is serialized in vertical units, away from the existing manga in the volume unit.

An official from the webtoon industry told Media SR: “As readers consume comics in the form of swiping the screen from the way they turn the card, there has also been a change in content such as splitting and composing. slides cutting “. The Korean platform, which has accumulated know-how in the sector, has a global competitiveness “.

In particular, since the third quarter of this year, the transaction volume of not only Korean webtoons but also Chinese webtoons has increased by 87.6% on a quarterly basis, suggesting the possibility of becoming a global content distribution platform.

Kakao Japan CEO Kim Jae-yong said, “Since the start of the service, we have focused on serving users of smartphone snack culture content and the recent rapid growth is emerging.” Will, “he said.