[Featured Stock] DearU Partners with Tencent to Enter Chinese Market

Global fan communication platform DearU is showing strong performance. Recent news of a strategic partnership and service agreement with Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME), the largest music platform company in China, appears to be influencing its stock price.

As of 1:34 PM on the 28th, DearU is trading at 30,150 KRW, up 26.68% compared to the previous trading day.

According to TME's official Weibo page, DearU's ‘Bubble’ has been launched within QQ Music, the largest music streaming platform in the group, providing Chinese users with opportunities to interact directly not only with K-POP but also with popular local C-POP stars. ‘QQ Music-Bubble’ is expected to feature a large number of Korean and Chinese artists.

China accounts for the largest subscriber base of Bubble. As of the second quarter of this year, Chinese subscribers make up 35% of Bubble's total user base. China bans the use of the Google Store. Most existing Chinese Bubble users have been accessing the service via iOS. As of September 2024, the Android OS market share in China is about 77% (Statista, ‘Market Share of Mobile Operating Systems in China’), but Android users have so far faced limitations in using the Bubble service.

With collaboration with TME, once the Bubble service is offered on Tencent’s ‘My App’ app market, the most widely used app market among Android users in China, it is expected that the number of Bubble subscribers will rapidly increase due to the influx of Android users in China.

Furthermore, TME plans to expand cooperation with other music platforms within the group, such as KuGou Music, Kuwo Music, and other services. These platforms collectively have 800 million users and over 120 million paid subscribers, providing DearU with a strong growth engine through collaboration with the TME group.

A DearU representative stated, “The cooperation with TME will be an important opportunity not only to expand IP and subscribers but also to further solidify DearU’s position as a global fandom platform.” They added, “This year marks the first year of global expansion, starting with Japan and launching services in the United States,” and “Expectations for growth in overseas markets are rising further through expansion into China.”