Naver claims services are its strength
NAVER CORP, South Korea's largest search portal and developer for the LINE online application, has revealed the story behind its success in its home market as well as internationally, including in Thailand.
“In South Korea, Naver is providing users with a lot of online data and information, ranging from news, entertainment, music and education, to an online cafe and encyclopaedia. These services are our strength, and that helps us gain revenue from advertising,” Ryu Min Ho, the company’s Internet research team leader, said recently. The company accounts for more than 75 per cent of all search queries in South Korea, making it the fifth-most-used search engine in the world, behind Google search, Yahoo!, Baidu and Bing, respectively.
The excellent telecommunications system in Korea is one of the biggest factors behind the firm’s domestic success, as well as Naver’s provision of up to 70 million information categories and 1.3 million information boxes, he said.
Wikipedia has reported that more than 25 million South Koreans have Naver as their default browser start page.
The company has rivals in its home market, such as Duam, which accounts for 20 per cent, Google (2.9 per cent), SK Comms (1.9 per cent), plus some smaller players.
Aside from South Korea, Naver is also the No-1 search portal in Japan for LINE, while it is No 2 in Thailand in the same segment. However, the biggest application player in Korea is Kakao.
Naver has seen off some of the big search portals in Korea, such as Yahoo! in 2003-2004, just five years after its establishment.
The company has 4,804 employees working at head office and in countries such as Japan, China, Vietnam and Thailand.
It has hired some foreigners at its home base, including Thais. They work in the development department, said the team leader. The company has expanded its network to some 230 countries, with more than 205 million users.
For LINE alone, Japan is the largest market with 58 million users, followed by Thailand with 33 million, India and Indonesia – both with 30 million – Mexico and Spain, each with 18 million, Taiwan with 17 million, and South Korea with 10 million. “We are leading in global market share, except in China and the United States. Therefore, there are many places to go. We are trying to raise our presence in certain segments in some countries, including as a search engine in Japan and Thailand,” he explained.
In order to strengthen competitiveness and maintain revenue from advertising, the company is also working more closely with local newspapers to provide online news.
“Naver and news organisations synergise to survive. If we can keep our users, it means we can get advertising,” Ryu said.
The company has also built its own data centre, located in Chuncheon, as a centralised site for secure data and intellectual property.
Naver has an office in Bangkok and the group aims to develop Thailand as one of the biggest search-engine segments, which is currently dominated by Google. The Thai market generates good income from the online sale of stickers and characters, he added.
