"Our service has targeted not only traditional comic fans, but the overall snack culture content user base," said Jae-yong Kim, the head of Kakao Japan. Webtoon has been the driving force behind Piccoma as its webtoon transactions posted 58 billion won in the third quarter, up 680% from the same period last year. 'Solo Leveling,' a Korean webtoon that hit No. 1 on Piccoma in 2019 However, digital comics accounts for only half of the total market, in which Piccoma has garnered great success with webtoon content at its forefront. Piccoma's growth can be attributed to its strong performance in Japan, the world's comic kingdom, which boasts a comics market valued at a staggering 5.7 trillion won. In terms of revenue, the company posted 22.5 billion won in 2017, 62.3 billion won in 2018 and 143.9 billion won in 2019. For the first nine months of the year, it posted around 270 billion won ($242 million) in transactions, a 168% increase from the year-earlier period. In the third quarter of this year, Piccoma posted around 130 billion won ($116.5 million) in platform transactions, a 247% jump from the year-earlier period. We are steadily solidifying our position as a leading comics platform not just in Japan, but globally," said a Kakao official. "We achieved all of this just four years after our foray into Japan. It began Japan-based services in 2016 and became the country's top-grossing non-game app in July of this year, outperforming Naver's comics platform LINE Manga for the first time. Piccoma is a digital comics platform run by Kakao Japan, a subsidiary of Kakao Corp. In the non-game apps category, Piccoma came in seventh place, higher than streaming app Netflix and music platform Pandora. 1 grossing mobile application worldwide.Īccording to mobile data platform App Annie, Piccoma was the highest-grossing app for September in the comics and novels app category based on aggregated data from App Store and Google Play.
9 that its webtoon (digital comics) platform Piccoma has become the No.
Kakao Corp., South Korea's platform giant, announced on Nov.