Chat App Comm Will Be a Big Part of DeNA’s 2013 Plan

DeNA is doing well financially these days, and we’d all like to find out more about its plans for 2013. I attempted to dig up some more information recently at the company’s headquarters in Shibuya, Japan. The good folks at DeNA couldn’t reveal too much. But somehow even when the conversation is going in circles, its new chat app Comm constantly proved a recurring theme.

The app was built not to compete on messaging or texting. Rather, Comm is positioned to have superior voice call quality to compete with other chat apps, a DeNA representative explained to me.

With successful case studies from KakaoTalk and Line that games can thrive on chat apps, it surely has applied pressure on DeNA to rethink where and how people will play mobile games in the future. Mobile chat apps are proving to be one avenue where casual mobile gamers spend time and money. Such apps have an in-built a social graph to keep games casual and viral.

So far, there’s no plan for DeNA to insert games into its Comm app. It’s just too early to do so for such a young app. Here’s our timeline for Comm so far:

• Oct 23: Comm was launched
• Oct 23: Achieved number one on top free on Japan’s App Store
• Nov 14: Hit one million downloads
• Nov 16: Began airing TV commercials, which drove up downloads
• Dec 12: Adds popular stickers/stamp feature, for free

The target for Comm this year is 10 million downloads. I’m not sure how feasible that is but I’m hearing that Comm currently has about five million downloads. A representative declined to confirm the figures but did say that Comm will “play a big role in 2013,” although they didn’t elaborate on exactly how it might do that.

But perhaps the answer is obvious: Build a massive network of users and then distribute games to them. It worked phenomenally well for Line and KakaoTalk so DeNA should excel also if the users on Comm are as active as on competing chat apps.