Daum Kakao to enter Chinese mobile game market

South Korea's leading mobile messenger and web portal operator Daum Kakao Corp has teamed up with Korean game developers to enter China's lucrative mobile publishing market, source of the company announced on Tuesday.

Daum Kakao, owner of messenger app Kakao Talk, will promote South Korean game developers publishing their mobile game apps on Chinese platforms, including 360.cn, Tencent and Baidu. But also on international platforms like the Apple store, said Daum Kakao in a press release.

The company will strengthen its Beijing office in the first half of the year and will employ 50 people to work on the development of the new service.

"We will spare no effort to help Korean mobile games expand in China through a localization strategy," explained Lee Seung-won, Daum Kakao head of the games division for the Chinese market.

Daum Kakao will be responsible for the production and management of the mobile games and will cover the costs of its publication in China. Additionally, the South Korean company will work on a development tool that will allow developers to create mobile games suitable for multiple platforms.

Current trends show that Chinese game users are increasingly shifting from games on social networking sites to mobile games via chat apps.

The Chinese mobile games industry is expected to continue growing at a high speed in the coming years. The Chinese mobile games market was forecast to grow at an impressive rate of 93% in 2014 over 2013, to $2.9 billion, and is expected to continue expanding at a brisk CAGR of 37.6% through 2018 according to market intelligence firm Niko Partners.