Korean essaging app Kakao aims to be No 1 here
Kakao, a giant global mobile social platform from South Korea, is expanding its business in Thailand with the aim of becoming No 1 in the Thai market.
John Park, chief global and strategy officer of Daum Kakao, said the firm launched Kakao talk, a mobile messaging application and global mobile social platform that allows smartphone users to send messages to their friends and family via multi-platforms such as text messaging, sticker and animated stickers, a couple of months ago.
Currently, it has about 3.5 million subscribers.
It provides three main features in the Thai market – animated and sound stickers that allow users to share the fun with up to 999 Kakao Talk friends using the group chat friend feature; hilarious group calls that lets users to easily choose funny Avatar sound and talk in HD quality with up to five Kakao Talk friends at the same time; and, Kakao Talk PlusFriend feature that allows users to join the fan club community of K-Pop top stars.
The firm intends to join hands with local partners for games, digital content and commerce to provide a new experience to users.
The firm expects to reach about 10 million subscribers by the end of next year and become No 1 in the market.
"After our success in becoming No 1 in the Korean market with 93 per cent of total smartphone subscribers and we’re striving for No 1 in the Thai market. We offer 15 languages, and there are more than 167 million users in 196 countries. About 7 million messages are exchanged every day via our application, including text, photo, video and audio. We are also providing sound stickers for the first time in Thailand," said Park.
Meanwhile, WeChat – a China-based social app – is offering a new feature to support the lifestyle of next-generation users.
Pavarisa Chumvigrant, vice president marketing of Sanook Online that provides WeChat – a complete mobile communication and social networking app – said that the arrival of Kakao would create variety in social platforms in Thailand.
The firm also provides new features to support the lifestyle of smartphone users such as translation features that allow users to translate text from Thai to any of 20 languages real-time free of charge, WeChat recall that will allow smartphone users to delete a message that they sent to a friend without appeal at the destination within two minutes, universal search that allow users to search a word from a chat group, animated sticker and sight feature that would allow users to develop a 6-second video.
