Deregulation Effects
Milk Music, KakaoPay, and Telegram emerged as mobile services that can attract hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers in the blink of an eye. Users are flocking to those services.
This phenomenon is getting a lot of attention, since it is occurring in tandem with relaxed government regulations.
According to industry sources on Oct. 6, Samsung's music service app Milk has surpassed 500,000 downloads only 15 days after its launch. People can listen to digital music in real time with the app. The popularity of the streaming Internet radio service has been growing as shown by the fact that it was downloaded more than 100,000 times just one day after its introduction on Sept. 24. On the same day, the Galaxy Note 4 debuted as well.
Mobile payments service KakaoPay is also getting more popular. The number of KakaoPay subscribers has already surpassed 1.2 million just one month after its launch. 140,000 people became new members only 15 days after the launch, and up to 300,000 people subscribe to this service per day.
In addition, German-based messaging app Telegram is threatening KakaoTalk's position in the market, as the number of Korean users increased to 1 million merely one week after the initiation of the government surveillance of KakaoTalk. The number of people who use the English version of Telegram was 519,000 at the end of September, but the figure doubled in one week. Previously only 500-odd Korean people used the service, but it increased 600 times in one week.
Experts are saying that these services are becoming popular because developers of those services understand what users really want. In particular, Telegram is drawing a lot of attention with its various features that get away from widespread government surveillance, including a “secret chat” setting that automatically destroys text messages a set period of time after being read.
KakaoPay is also receiving a warm response from the industry and users, since this service enables users to make payments just by entering a password on a mobile device, after registering related passwords in an app on KakaoTalk. The mobile payments service was made possible with relaxed government regulations. Since Chairman Shin Jae-yoon of the Financial Services Commission announced a policy to simplify regulations over electronic banking on Oct. 6, more new services are expected to be released in the future.
In the meantime, Milk is likely to be embroiled in controversy due to opposition from the digital music download industry, in that the music service might shake the notion that digital music is not free.