Friendster to Promote KakaoTalk in Malaysia, Sets up Kakao Malaysia Subsidiary

In a big move into Malaysia, Friendster has agreed with Korean startup Kakao to help promote its chat and social messaging apps KakaoTalk and KakaoStory in Malaysia. That also includes Friendster managing Kakao digital mobile game channels, mobile gifting, and the digital item store in the Malaysian market. The partnership will also see Friendster (which is owned by Malaysia-based MOL) establishing a wholly owned subsidiary called ‘Kakao Malaysia Sdn’ to operate Kakao’s platform in the country.

Kakao Malaysia will be responsible for sourcing local content, advertisers, and new game content – which I believe will be good news for local game developers.

Today’s announcement also updates KakaoTalk’s statistics. The app currently has more than 94 million users across the globe on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Bada. Each day, about 5.2 billion messages are sent on KakaoTalk. It also has 142 games introduced on its platform which has accumulated more than 268 million users across all its games as of May 2013. Its main rivals in the region are NHN’s Line app and Tencent’s WeChat.

MOL Global’s CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah commented on this partnership:

Kakao Malaysia will ride on MOL’s leadership position in the online games payment market in Malaysia where MOL has an estimated 70 percent market share. As smartphone penetration increases in Malaysia, mobile gaming will become more prevalent and this will allow online games to reach the masses. This will allow local content developers and intellectual property owners to generate a new revenue source from the Kakao platform.

While you read this, Kakao Malaysia is already splashing out on TV commercials to boost its presence in Malaysia, featuring Korean K-pop group BigBang and Malaysian singer and local songwriter Yunalis Zarai.