Cracking The Korean Mobile App Market

Sukamal Pegu is the head of developer channel J-APAC at InMobi. For any mobile app questions, you can get in touch via Linkedin.

Image credit: Thinkdigit.com

With an estimated 28 million active iOS and Android devices, South Korea is one of the biggest and most attractive markets for app developers trying to gain a foothold in Asia. It also helps that the country is the unofficial home of the Android ecosystem, largely due to Samsung and LG, two of the biggest Android phone manufacturers in the world.

But if developers think that all they need to do is to simply localize their apps and release them on Google Play or the App Store to be successful in South Korea, they are in for a rude shock. But at the same time, it is not rocket science either. All developers have to do is to dig a little deep into the market and understand what makes apps tick in Korea.

So, lets try to scratch the surface and see what’s happening in South Korea.

South Korea is smartphone country with a data connection to match

• A recent study suggested that over 76 percent of the adult population (15-64 years) in South Korea use a smartphone. When you consider South Korea’s total population of roughly over 50 million, that’s incredible penetration!

• 28 million active iOS and Android devices

• Although South Korea is a big Android market, Apple has made huge inroads since 2011 with its iDevices, largely due to its desirability quotient and Apple’s seamless ecosystem.

• While the western world happily sips from modest 3G mobile connections, South Korea is still outpacing other nations with the adoption of 4G technologies, which provides speeds up to 40.32 mbps on the go. That’s around 10 times faster than 3G.

High data consumption on the go