KakaoTalk has gained 16 million users in just one year in Indonesia after Kakao signed an advertising deal with Big Bang - a K-Pop boy band popular in Indonesia - and started offering unlimited KakaoTalk data through carrier Telkomsel. And it’s a key market we want to win,” said Kate Sohn, vice president of Kakao’s global business development division. “Indonesia is probably the most competitive mobile messenger market right now. Estimates put smartphone use at 50 percent before the end of the decade, by which time messaging apps’ global revenue could be over $24 billion.

Under-30s make up over half of the 240 million Indonesians, where just 20 percent use smartphones, making the country a prime growth market for app makers. But KakaoTalk and Line have connected with younger users by also offering voice calls, games, shopping, merchandise and stickers, or message-conveying cartoons. Kakao Corp has hired pop stars and Naver Corp unit Line Corp has partnered Samsung Electronics Co in a country whose capital Jakarta boasts the most users of Twitter Inc’s microblog by city, according to researcher McKinsey & Company.īBM has long been Indonesia’s most popular messaging app, with Facebook Inc’s $19 billion buyout target WhatsApp in pursuit.

SEOUL/JAKARTA, March 10 (Reuters) - South Korea’s pioneering mobile messaging apps have taken their oversized emoticons to Indonesia, intent on breaking the dominance of BlackBerry Ltd’s BBM messaging service in one of the world’s most active social media markets.

Kakaotalk emoticons free