YouTube’s Threat
YouTube, the most popular video streaming program in the world, is catching up with KakaoTalk in Korea.
According to Korean Click’s March 23 data, KakaoTalk and KakaoStory recorded a unique visitor (UV) number of 24.96 million and 17.85 million in February this year. They were followed by YouTube (17.21 million), Google Search (16.86 million), and Naver (16.23 million).
The remarkable point is that YouTube is poised to catch up with domestically-developed social networking services at a very rapid pace. YouTube’s UV had added up to 14.76 million in February last year, which is even smaller than that of Google Search at 14.85 million. However, it took third place by beating Google in just one year.
Not only UV, but also the average visit duration is on the rise for YouTube. The latter was 169 minutes last month, about an hour longer than the 115 minutes of February last year. This means that YouTube’s presence as a popular video content platform is becoming increasingly cemented in Korea. It is said that approximately 60 percent of the YouTube traffic in Korea is from mobile devices as of now.
It is hard to find a viable competitor against YouTube for now. It is solidifying its monopolistic position in the video platform market in Korea. According to Cisco, video services are estimated to account for 66.5 percent of mobile data consumption in 2017. The percentage is likely to be as high as 74 percent in Korea, where users particularly prefer mobile-based video services.