Europe emerges as battleground for webtoon dominance

South Korea’s tech behemoths Naver Corp. and Kakao Corp. are intensifying competition over who will dominate the global webtoon market. 

Naver Webtoon, a subsidiary of Naver, announced on Monday that it will establish a local entity in Europe within the first half of this year – preliminarily called Webtoon EU. 

Once established, Naver Webtoon will be present in all of its target markets; namely South Korea, Japan and Europe, in addition to the United States where the headquarters are located. 

Naver launched its webtoon services in France in 2019 and added the German language services to its lineup last year. 

The webtoon arm of Naver explained it plans to expand the number of titles and is looking for local creators. Within this yesar, the company will add some 200 titles in French and about 100 titles in German. 

Come July, it will host the third webtoon contest in France. Also in the latter half of this year, it will operate the Canvas program there.

Naver launched Canvas in June 2020, a platform on which amateur creators can publish their comics for free. Once a product gains enough traction, the author earns the opportunity to publish on Naver Webtoon. 

“With the establishment of a European office, I expect more localized strategies,” Naver Webtoon CEO Kim Jun-koo said.

Naver’s webtoon service began as an in-house startup (CIC) of Naver in 2004. Expanding on this model, Naver Webtoon Corp. was established in May 2017.

Kakao has also been ramping up its presence in Europe. 

On Feb. 17, Kakao Corp. launched the European version of its webtoon subscription service.

Japanese subsidiary Kakao Japan Corp. developed the service Piccoma, the archipelago’s No. 1 ranked webtoon subscription service. 

Piccoma’s Europe entity was established last September. The company plans to offer South Korean and Japanese content not yet available in France. 

“In the future, we will also expand our offerings to local manhwa and other contents created in Europe,” said Kim Jae-yong, CEO of Kakao Piccoma Corp. 

The Korean tech giants are targeting France to make inroads into the European market because of the country’s strategic importance to its neighbors when it comes to cultural consumption. 

The French comics market size reached $298 million last year, the continent's biggest, according to The Korea Creative Content Agency. 

The market size is expected to grow 3-4% each year to reach $346 million by 2025.

Looking at the tally so far, Naver is ahead of Kakao. 

Naver ranked No. 1 in the number of comics-related paid app downloads in France’s Google Play since January 2020, based on data compiled by app data analysis platform data.ai, formerly App Annie.

ContentsFirst followed suit, of which Naver Webtoon is the largest shareholder with a 25% stake. 

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.