Kakao Piccoma Launches Piccoma Service in France

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Kakao Piccoma's comprehensive digital comic platform Piccoma officially launched its service in France on the 17th (local time), marking the beginning of its full-fledged global comprehensive digital content platform journey.

Before launching the service in France, Kakao Piccoma explained that it established a platform launch strategy optimized for the local market based on an analysis of local culture, content usage patterns, and lifestyle. The digital comic market in France is rapidly growing, and there is a high preference for Japanese manga. Recently, the awareness and popularity of Korean webtoons have been steadily increasing.

Piccoma's greatest strength lies in simultaneously offering distinctly characteristic Japanese manga and Korean webtoons. It has put special effort into providing titles that reflect local users' tastes, including many Japanese manga and popular Korean webtoons not previously available in France. The platform introduces the ‘Wait and Free’ business model, allowing users to experience content optimized for the digital environment.

Kakao Piccoma completed the establishment of ‘Piccoma Europe’ corporation in September last year and appointed CEO Kim Hyung-rae to ensure Piccoma's successful settlement and competitiveness in France. CEO Kim Hyung-rae is recognized as a local digital content industry expert, having served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Delitoon SAS, the first digital comic platform in Europe.

Meanwhile, the comprehensive digital comic platform ‘Piccoma’ operated by Kakao Piccoma has maintained the No. 1 position in the non-game app category in Japan since July 2020 (according to App Annie reports) due to its user-friendly services and policies. This year, it plans to solidify its position as the top platform through the acquisition of competitive content including original intellectual property (IP), more sophisticated personalized recommendation algorithms, and service enhancements, while exploring business model diversification within Japan.

Piccoma France is available through the Android app, and iOS app and web services will be provided in the first half of this year.

Kim Hyung-rae, CEO of Kakao Piccoma Europe, said, “Piccoma France will continuously offer fresh works across diverse genres to satisfy users' varied tastes and delicate needs. Furthermore, we plan to expand the proportion of works by encompassing local French comics as well as titles from across Europe in the future.”