S.Korea ranks fourth in global mobile app market

The size of the South Korean mobile app market has exceeded 10 trillion won ($761 million).

Data.ai, an app market analysis platform, released the 2024 Mobile Status Report on Thursday, estimating the global mobile app market last year.

According to the report, consumer spending in the global app market last year reached $171 billion (225 trillion won), a 3% increase from the previous year. China ($52.1 billion), the US ($44.9 billion), and Japan ($17.9 billion) led the market in size.

South Korea ranked fourth in the global app market. Consumer spending in South Korea last year was $7.86 billion (10.37 trillion won), a 25% increase from the previous year's spending of $6.29 billion (8.27 trillion won). Among the top ten countries in the app market, South Korea had the steepest increase in spending.

The key driver of the South Korean app market was webtoons. Consumer spending on domestic webtoon apps last year increased by 72% to $286.7 million (380 billion won) compared to the previous year.

Webtoon apps such as KakaoPage and Naver Webtoon ranked second and third, respectively, in-app spending, excluding games, following YouTube.

The next significant contributor was over-the-top media services. Consumer spending in this segment increased by 53% to $214.1 million (280 billion won) compared to the previous year. The over-the-top app that consumers spent the most on was Tving.

The growth trend in the mobile gaming market also persisted. Consumer spending on mobile game apps in the South Korean market last year increased by 20% to $6.34 billion (8.33 trillion won) compared to the previous year.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at deep@hankyung.com