Koreans use Kakao for messenger, Naver for other purposes: data

South Korea’s top mobile messenger application KakaoTalk has more users than that of Naver, the nation’s biggest portal, data showed.

According to the data from mobile big data platform IGAWORKS, KakaoTalk and Naver recorded 35,590,000 and 30,160,000 monthly active user (MAU), respectively, last month.

KakaoTalk exceeded Naver in both monthly average time and days spent on the platforms per single user. People spent a monthly average of 11.7 hours/24.6 days on KakaoTalk, and 10.2 hours/18.6 days on Naver.

Kakao’s finance and mobility applications Kakao Bank, Kakao Pay and Kakao T registered 7,550,000, 780,000 and 5,810,000 MAU, respectively. Naver does not provide comparable applications at the moment.

However, more people seemed to use applications provided by Naver over Kakao for other services like navigation and webtoons.

When it comes to navigation, Naver Map generated 11,120,000 MAU, which is more than double the number of Kakao Map’s 5,300,000 MAU.

Naver outperformed Kakao in webtoons as well. Naver Webtoon and Naver Series secured a total of 5,910,000 MAU whereas Kakao Page and Daum Webtoon recorded 4,080,000 MAU.

By Kim Tae-eun (kimt17@heraldcorp.com)