Naver Corp., South Korea’s top Internet portal, is set to launch a new mobile platform that will allow users to share and monetize content they have created.
The new platform, temporarily named “Naver Post” by developers, began a closed beta testing of the service with early testers last month.
Naver Post aims to provide a variety of content made by users including Naver bloggers. The mobile content platform market is facing greater competition with the launch of Naver’s new service. Its contenders have already jumped into the market: Kakao Page by Kakao was launched in April and Story Ball started its service on Aug. 8.
Naver Post, slated for launch within this year, is also to provide content free of charge, at least in the initial stage. The platform is expected to differ from other existing services. Details about pricing and other options remain unknown.
“As we have seen in content sales cases on the Internet, it is difficult for us to make users pay for them,” a Naver official told Money Today newspaper on Tuesday. The official said the company was mulling other ways to generate profits such as banner ads.
Some speculate that Naver’s free content policy is to avoid the travails of Kakao Page.
For all the new features, however, it seems a tough battle even for cash-rich Naver given that its competitors are struggling.
Kakao Page, one of the pioneers in mobile content platforms, attempted to nurture the paid content market on its proprietary mobile platform, only to see disappointing results. It signed on big names such as a leading comic artist Huh Young-man, but sales figures did not add up to what Kakao previously projected.
Kakao Page, at one point, included a product with a daily total sales amount of 10,000 won ($9) in the top 10 content.
July 16 data by online ranking site Rankey.com showed that only 1 percent of smartphone users regularly access Kakao Page, and the number of its users fell from 570,000 in May to 330,000 in June.
Compared to the usage ratio of other Kakao products such as mobile messenger Kakao Talk and Kakao games among smartphone owners -- 97 percent and 68 percent, respectively -- the popularity of Kakao Page is far from impressive.
Last month, Kakao changed its policy to include free content on its paid mobile platform while lowering the minimum price of its products to 100 won from 500 won.
