Line Manga Ranks First in Japan's App Market Sales for May... Piccoma Comes in Second

Blockbusters with Monthly Sales Exceeding 100 Million Yen Continue to Appear

Naver Webtoon's Japanese service, Line Manga, ranked first in sales on the Japanese application market for the first time last month.

According to mobile data analysis company Data.ai on the 4th, Line Manga ranked first in overall app sales, including games, in the Japanese app market in May. Piccoma, a competing platform that had maintained the number one spot in the Japanese app market, was pushed to second place.

This is the result of continuous hit releases on Line Manga. Last year, the webtoon "Ip Hak Yong Byeong" surpassed 100 million yen in monthly transaction volume, and major works such as "Yaktal Sinbu," "Jaehon Hwanghu," and "Sangnamja" each earned 100 million yen monthly. Recently, "Shinhyeol-ui Guseju," created by a Japanese webtoon production company, also exceeded 100 million yen in monthly transaction volume. "Shinhyeol-ui Guseju" started its Naver Webtoon service in May and is scheduled to launch in North America this month.

An industry insider said, "Line Manga is expanding the local ecosystem and contributing to the growth of the Japanese manga market by strengthening cooperation with Korean webtoon writers and production companies as well as Japanese publishers and production companies."

Line Digital Frontier, which operates Line Manga, acquired the e-book service company "eBook Initiative Japan" in 2022 and is expanding the distribution of Line Manga works to increase reader contact points. The combined monthly active users (MAU) of the two platforms under Line Digital Frontier is 21.1 million. Transaction volume surpassed 100 billion yen in just 11 months last year.