Alternative to YouTube
KT launched its new live video streaming service “Dovido” with aims to take on market leaders such as Google’s YouTube. Starting with the new video streaming platform, Dovido, the nation’s No. 2 telecom carrier plans to expand the content platform service business including social networking services (SNS) and online-to-offline (O2O) services, just like Google and Naver.
KT held a press conference at the headquarters in Sejong-ro, Seoul, on August 30 to unveil its new Dovido service and new video streaming service and platform business strategy.
Dovido began the beta service for Android smartphones on the same day. It is a new kind of video platform service that combines mobile video contents and e-commerce. The service started
With the new mobile video content service, individual or small multi-channel network (MCN) operators can easily produce, edit, search and upload video content to sell their products at the same time.
Content creators can easily make video contents without specialized tools and make profits according to hits and sales, while consumers can instantly purchase a product what they like while watching video contents, according to the company.
KT said its main competitor of Dovido would be YouTube, the world’s largest mobile video platform. The company said that its new service that combines e-commerce system with existing video platform is competitive enough compared to YouTube as Instagram has built up its presence by specializing photo sharing which was not being paid attention to by Facebook.
KT also said that Dovido is a content platform service targeting the global market which is not related to communications. The Dovido service has been available in Korea and China at the same time. The company aims to record 73.8 billion won (US$65.89 million) in net sales, build a marketplace with a 1 trillion won (US$892.86 million) trade volume and attracts 200 million users from around the world by 2020. With “K-beauty” converging with hallyu, it plans to target the Chinese market first and then the North American and European markets.
Kim Hyung-wook, director of planning at the Platform Service Business Unit of KT, said, “KT will establish a new growth footing that goes beyond the communications sector with Dovido and continue to develop and promote promising platform businesses in the future.”