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Explain in detail naver+Line Webtoon and Kakao+Piccoma's manga revenue, investments, character business, etc.
Regarding the Korean comic market, Sanwen Entertainment has published a number of analyses in 2020:
Attack on the Korean comic platform: Piccoma has a half-yearly revenue of 450 million yuan, and Naver has more than 5 million monthly active users in North America
How does the Korean comic giant make an investment layout? KakaoPage voted for 13
How does Korean comics make the sea? The annual export volume is 310 million yuan
Survival and Income Survey of Korean Web Comic Authors
The current situation of Korean web comics: 2767 new ones are added every year, and 74.7% of enterprises are involved in going to sea
Korean Comic Book User Consumption Survey: One Piece is the most popular single book
Korean comics sell 4 billion yuan in half a year, and character IP earns 37.4 billion yuan in half a year (search for "Korea" on the 3wyu.com website to see more)
Recently, the two top groups of Korean Comics, Naver (Naver Webtoon + Line Webtoon, etc.) and Kakao (Daum Webtoon + Kakao Page + Piccoma, etc.) have released their 2020 annual results, and we take a look at the latest figures.
As the biggest beneficiaries of the contactless culture, both Internet companies achieved the highest results in history in 2020, with Kakao's annual sales exceeding 4 trillion won and Naver exceeding 5 trillion won.
2020 results of the two giants of Korean comics
In the following, Sanwen Entertainment will first interpret the data from six angles, such as the revenue of Naver and Kakao, the revenue of comic APP, the investment in the comic field, the character business, and the online text going to sea.
1. Company revenue
In 2020, the capricious epidemic hit real business in South Korea hard, while Naver and Kakao, who are Internet companies, set their highest results since the establishment of the company.
Not only did Naver reverse years of declining sales and operating profit, Kakao even turned a loss into a profit. (For details, see: Korean Comics Monetization Observation: 2019 Kakao Comics paid revenue of 1.715 billion yuan, Naver Comics global MAU reached 60 million)
As a result, in the fourth quarter, Naver's sales were 8.785 billion yuan (1 trillion 512.6 billion won), an increase of 28.3% year-on-year. Operating profit was CNY 1,881 million (KRW 323.8 billion), up 17.6% year-on-year.
In Kakao, sales in the fourth quarter were CNY 7.171 billion (KRW 1,235.1 billion), up 46% year-on-year. Operating profit was CNY 870 million (KRW 149.8 billion), an increase of 88% year-on-year.
(Naver and Kakao annual sales statistics table, in billion won)
In 2020, Naver's full-year sales totaled 30.806 billion yuan (KRW 5,304.1 billion), an increase of 21.8% year-on-year. Operating profit was CNY 7,058 million (KRW 1,215.3 billion), an increase of 5.2% year-on-year.
Kakao's full-year sales were CNY 24,142 million (KRW 4,156.7 billion), up 35.4% year-on-year. Operating profit was CNY 2,649 million (KRW 456 billion), an increase of 120.5% year-on-year.
2. Naver's content revenue, and Line Webtoon data
Naver's content business (including web comics, music, V, SNOW, etc.) increased by 48.8% year-on-year, with annual sales of 2.673 billion yuan (460.2 billion won). Line Webtoon's global monthly active population also hit a new high, reaching 72 million, with annual transactions exceeding 4.763 billion yuan (820 billion won).
3. KakaoPage, PICCOMA data
In Kakao, KakaoPage and PICCOMA generated annual sales of CNY 3.067 billion (KRW 527.987 billion). PICCOMA has also further narrowed its share gap with KakaoPage. Such achievements have also caused KakaoPage to change its position, publicly stating that KakaoPage expects PICCOMA to achieve sales of 5.808 billion yuan (1 trillion won) in 2021 and KakaoPage to achieve sales of 4.067 billion yuan (700 billion won).
According to Sanwen Entertainment, kakaoPage's transaction volume in 2020 through IP authorization alone reached 3.060 billion yuan (526.8 billion won). According to the Japanese statistics website Tag, PICCOMA's cumulative sales in 2020 are 1.513 billion yuan (24.588 billion yen).
Kakao announced the merger of KakaoPage and Kakao M in January to further consolidate its content business, and Kakao Entertainment, after the merger of the two companies, will complete the merger work in March this year. The establishment of the new company means that Kakao will further expand the utilization rate of its IP content, closely combine web comics, novels and music, and create more revenue. Some people also believe that the merger of the two companies at the moment when KakaoPage is preparing to go public is to expand KakaoPage's corporate valuation.
4, Naver's "attack strategy" to go to sea
Naver, in order to further expand the North American market, the wholly-owned acquisition of North American online writing platform Wattpad for 3.863 billion yuan (US$600 million) is the highest acquisition by Naver Chuangsha to date (441 million yuan acquisition of LINE parent company in 2010). As early as 2017, Wattpad had received 2.58 trillion yuan ($40 million) of financing from Tencent, which can be said to be a highly concerned content creation platform.
As of now, the online article creation platform has about 90 million users every month and spends 23 billion minutes reading here. More than 5 million creators upload 1 billion works every month. Naver said that through the acquisition of Wattpad, Naver was able to leap to become the world's largest online comics and online text company.
5. Investment layout of Kakao's manga business
And Kakao's foreign investment, before the three entertainment in the "Korean comic giant how to do investment layout?" KakaoPage Invested in 13" article, Kakao began to invest in content creation companies in 2013, and the total amount of investment reached 700 billion won. As a result, Kakao's investment companies include 13 content creation companies, including D&C Media, and five newly established and acquired overseas content platforms, including Kakao Japan.
6、Line Friends和Kakao Friends
In terms of character business, neither Line Friends nor Kakao Friends has yet to disclose 2020 sales figures. However, according to Sanwen Entertainment, Line Friends's sales of China's "Double Eleven" in 2020 will be 120 million yuan (20.7 billion won). In order to further open up the Chinese market, Line Friends also launched a new character with Internet celebrity Li Jiaqi - Never's Family, and also focused on promoting the role ROY6 developed in cooperation with popular idol Wang Yuan, of which EDDY and Never's Family linked character products sold 100,000 in just 15 minutes.
Kakao Friends also officially reached a cooperation with Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall in December 2020, launching an official flagship store. In order to welcome China's 618 Shopping Festival, National Day, Double Eleven and other festivals in 2021, Kakao Friends Super IP Day and Internet celebrity linkage live broadcast have also prepared a number of activities. In addition to the shopping festival, Kakao Friends also said that it will also participate in three major music festivals in China to promote the popularity of Kakao Friends in China.
Naver and Kakao's feud
The current Kakao is a comprehensive Internet enterprise formed in 2014 by merging with Daum, and Daum was founded in 1995 by operating the portal of the same name, once competing with foreign portals such as Yahoo, surviving in a fierce environment and growing into the first largest portal. But he was eventually defeated by Naver, who was intervened by overseas capital, and has since fallen from the altar.
Now, in addition to the portal, the competition between the two companies in the field of content is also in the spotlight. Naver first launched the web comic service in 2004, but because Korean comic users at the time were not familiar with paid comics, the development did not receive much attention. It is understood that it is difficult to search for relevant reports of Naver Webtoon before December 2005 on the Korean network. Naver Webtoon, as we know it now, is a content platform that has been formed after a new adaptation in February 2006 to provide web comics and comic services as a supplement.
KakaoPage, which was founded in April 2013, was not optimistic at first, until the platform obtained the serial rights of "Moonlight Carver" and used this as an opportunity to invite many famous authors to publish their works. But Daum Webtoon, which merged with Kakao, was established in February 2003, well before Naver Webtoon. At that time, Daum Webtoon reorganized the news section and opened a column for current affairs comics. Then, thanks to cartoonist Jiang Cao's "Pure Love Comics" with more than 32 million hits on a single page, Daum officially launched an independent online comic platform.
KakaoPage, as a rising star, quickly caught up with Naver Webtoon through the "wait and go" payment mechanism. The success of KakaoPage led Naver Webtoon to adopt the same payment mechanism for reform. At present, naver Webtoon is still ahead of KakaoPage in South Korea, and the battlefields of the two companies have also been burned overseas from South Korea.
In 2014, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Naver officially entered the North American market to launch a comic platform service with Line Webtoon. And with this as a starting point, it has successively entered Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Europe and other countries and regions, and now the global monthly active users have reached 72 million.
Two years after Naver went to sea, Kakao also founded Kakao Japan in Japan and officially launched the PICCOMA web comic platform. After a daily turnover of only 220 yen to an annual sales of 1.513 billion yuan, PICCOMA successfully overtook Line Manga in August 2020 to become the most profitable manga platform in Japan and even in the world.
(PICCOMA and Line Manga monthly sales in 2020 in 100 million yen)
I don't know if Naver had anticipated this situation, or if Naver had taken the North American market as the main battlefield at the beginning, as early as May 2020, when Line Manga was still at the top of the Japanese comic book application list, Naver made a major decision - to integrate and unify the web comic business in South Korea, Japan and North America, and be headquartered in Los Angeles.
This is Naver's attempt to use Hollywood resources nearby to consolidate its development strategy of "comic/fiction → film and television". In fact, as soon as Netflix's first adaptation of Naver's web comic work "Sweet Home" was launched, it landed first in eight countries and regions such as the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, and rolled up a new wave of Korean wind. Another animation adapted from Japan, "Tower of the Gods", has also set off a chasing wind in the United States, once ranking 9th in Twitter hot search.
If Naver has further expanded overseas markets by holding hands with Netflix, Kakao has chosen to confront Netflix and launch its own streaming platform. Last November, a TV series based on Daum Webtoon's web comic "Legend of Wonder" soared from 2.7% to 11%, setting the highest rating for OCN tv to date.
Naver and Kakao's struggle will continue, and Kakao's relentless efforts have created a sense of crisis in Naver. The two companies continue to respond to development difficulties through internal reforms, as well as the continuous expansion of overseas markets to divert domestic sales difficulties. With the rapid changes in the Internet industry and the continuous pursuit of development and innovation by the two companies, Sanwen Entertainment will continue to pay attention to the report.
*Note: The currency units in the text are converted according to the Exchange Rate of South Korean Won to Renminbi on February 11