YouTube expected to outpace KakaoTalk to become top mobile platform

[Photo by Reuters / Yonhap]

KakaoTalk, South Korea’s top mobile messaging app operated by Kakao Corp., is expected to lose its head position as the leading mobile platform in the country to YouTube this year.

According to data from IGAWorks’ Mobile Index, a big data analytics solution, on Wednesday, KakaoTalk had a total of 41.02 million monthly active users (MAUs) in December 2023, just 336 users ahead of the 2nd place YouTube.

MAU represents the number of users that use a service at least once a month.

The MAU gap between KakaoTalk and YouTube has been at an all-time low almost every month since falling below the 1 million threshold in March 2023 from about 1.4 million in December 2022 to 840,000 in March 2023.

The gap further narrowed to 215,600 in November and around 300 in December 2023.

This trend marks the smallest monthly gap on record since Mobile Index began tracking the two major smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS, in May 2020.

If this trend continues, KakaoTalk is expected to lose its top position to YouTube this year.

The anticipated shift is particularly attributed to changes in the mobile usage patterns of users in their 30s. While YouTube has consistently been the leader in MAU for users aged 10 and below and in their 20s, KakaoTalk has held the top position for users in their 30s.

However, YouTube claimed the top spot in MAU for users in their 30s for six consecutive months from July to December.

Furthermore, YouTube has already surpassed KakaoTalk and Naver, a Korean tech platform, by a significant margin in terms of total monthly usage time for mobile applications in Korea.

The total usage time for YouTube on mobile devices in Korea was 1.6 billion hours, an increase of over 150 million hours from 1.47 billion hours a year ago.

This trend shows a gap of more than three times the amount of time spent on the second-ranked KakaoTalk (594.5 million hours) and the third-ranked Naver (324.15 million hours), respectively.