Daum Mobage is Launched for Android Market in Korea

A partnership that was first announced back in November has formally taken off today, as ‘Daum Mobage’ has been officially launched by Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432) and Korean web portal Daum (KDQ:035720). As indicated in November, the two companies are targeting 10 million users in the first year of operation in Korea.

Like the Mobage platform in general, Daum Mobage has an assortment of free-to-play games for smartphone users, as the platform and gaming apps are now available on the Android Market, with iOS in development. Users will be able to login using existing Daum credentials, and pay for in-game purchases using the Daum Billing mobile payment system. Daum’s director of new initiative(s), Kyongwan Son commented:

We expect Daum Mobage to quickly become South Korea’s most popular mobile gaming platform … By integrating DeNA’s Mobage platform with Daum’s services, including its influential mobile advertising network and mobile messenger service, we will strive to stimulate this new market and gather more than 10 million users with aggressive marketing and developer support.

DeNA hopes that it can capitalize on the ever-growing smartphone market in Korea, which has grown as large as Japan’s, but where social/mobile games have far more room to grow.

DeNA’s announcement today includes a game release schedule for 2012, which we’ve included below, along with some screenshots. More titles are expected to be added to this list later on. Developers who create games for Mobage in Japan can localize for the Korean market as Daum Mobage uses the same API.