WEBTOON Becomes No.1 in Japanese Digital Comic Market As Its Japanese Subsidiary Acquires eBOOK Initiative Japan
WEBTOON Becomes No.1 in Japanese Digital Comic Market As Its Japanese Subsidiary Acquires eBOOK Initiative Japan
WEBTOON Becomes No.1 in Japanese Digital Comic Market As Its Japanese Subsidiary Acquires eBOOK Initiative Japan
- eBOOK Initiative Japan becomes a Line Digital Frontier subsidiary to boost synergies between LINE Manga and eBOOK Japan
- Through the acquisition, WEBTOON secures 20 million MAU and KRW 800 billion transaction amount combined from two Japanese digital comic platforms
2022-03-31
LINE Digital Frontier, a Japanese subsidiary of WEBTOON, has completed the acquisition of eBOOK Initiative Japan, a Japanese e-book service provider. WEBTOON’s influence in the Japanese content market is expected to strengthen based on its Japanese services, LINE Manga and eBOOK Japan, the latter of which has already firmly cemented its presence in the market.
LINE Digital Frontier, which operates Japanese webtoon service LINE Manga, announced today that it has gained a 100% stake in eBOOK Initiative Japan, incorporating the company to become the subsidiary of LINE Digital Frontier.
Founded in 2000, eBOOK Initiative Japan is operating a Japanese e-book service company called eBOOK Japan and an online retail service for print called Bookfan. eBOOK Japan boasts high public recognition through its link with Japan’s leading web portal, Yahoo! JAPAN. It has more than 800,000 e-books, with 95% of sales being manga.
The combined transaction amount of LINE Manga and eBOOK Japan in 2021 reached KRW 800 billion, with the number of combined monthly active users (MAU) exceeding 20 million. WEBTOON is expected to have the highest transaction volume among digital comic platforms in Japan.
Through the acquisition, WEBTOON expects to further strengthen its capability in Japan’s digital comic market by creating synergies between mobile-based LINE Manga and web-based eBOOK Japan. Various webtoons from Korea and abroad will be distributed simultaneously to both services, enabling efficient promotion of content. Also, WEBTOON expects access to original content to improve on the app and website through increased search results on the Yahoo! Japan web portal.
WEBTOON plans to further strengthen its content lineup by adding various Korean webtoons to LINE Manga, while strengthening Japanese local content and expanding the webtoon ecosystem by discovering local creators. The competitiveness of the Japanese webtoon ecosystem will also increase, laying the foundation for advancing into the global market.
“This acquisition reflects our decision to take a leap forward in Japan, the world’s largest comic market. We will focus on expanding the webtoon ecosystem together with eBOOK Japan by solidifying LINE Manga’s growing influence in the Japanese content industry,” said Kim Jun-koo, WEBTOON founder and CEO.
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