Korean mobile apps expand into Taiwan for higher profitability

Spoon Radio logo [Courtesy of Spoon Radio]

Korean startups are expanding into the lucrative Taiwanese market in their quest for more profitability as high purchasing power and similar population density to Korea makes the country an attractive market for mobile-based commerce and community services.

Spoon Radio, an audio live streaming platform, is launching its service in Taiwan this week, leveraging its success in the Japanese market. The platform allows users to communicate solely through their voices and make money, with nearly half of its user traffic and revenue generated in Japan.

The expansion of Spoon Radio into Taiwan reflects its high profitability strategy. Earlier, Spoon Radio successfully attracted many users by expanding into Indonesia and Vietnam, but it discontinued its services in 2020 due to the difficulty of generating sufficient revenue compared with server costs. Spoon Radio Chief Executive Officer Hyukjae Choi, said that Taiwan shows a tendency of gross domestic product and purchasing power being proportional, with sufficient purchasing power that has surpassed Korea’s per capita GDP and gross national income. This led to his decision to launch the service in Taiwan.

Choi also said that Taiwan is open to content consumption and his company will approach the market by directly reaching out to local communities, rather than aggressively advertising on YouTube or social media as they did when they entered the Japanese market.

MYDUTY, another Korean app that helps nurses manage their schedules, is also preparing to expand its services to Taiwan. The app was designed to help nurses with irregular working hours and commuting to manage their schedules. It already attracted 130,000 users in Taiwan without any special marketing after launching the Chinese version in 2018.

Creatrip logo [Courtesy of Creatrip]

Considering that there are about 190,000 nurses in Taiwan, it is likely that most of them are using MYDUTY. FourWheels, the operator of MYDUTY, said that mainland China has a closed atmosphere with a burden to place servers locally, while Japan already has a similar service operated by local big companies.

MYDUTY is planning to sell its self-developed nurse-specific shoes in Taiwan from June. These shoes are optimized for nurses who spend long hours standing and frequently move around the hospital.

Since nurses tend to do all of their shopping on their smartphones, the idea is to sell within the MYDUTY platform instead of setting up local brick-and-mortar stores.

Apart from Spoon Radio and MYDUTY, other Korean startups are also expanding into Taiwan.

Creatrip, which started its official service in Taiwan early in 2016, has grown into a comprehensive platform most used by tourists visiting Korea from Taiwan, the second-largest country for travelers visiting Korea.

Users can browse Korea-related travel content, get discounts on restaurants, make reservations for various amenities including beauty and hospital services, book tickets for tourist attractions and activities, and even use delivery services. In 2019, Creatrip launched a direct sales agency service to make it easier for people to buy Korean products overseas, including Taiwan.