LOS ANGELES & SEOUL, South Korea—(BUSINESS WIRE)—WEBTOON will create a new European corporation, strengthening its position as the leading global digital comics platform and increasing its footprint in the region. The new WEBTOON European corporation’s headquarters will be in France.
Local European comic book writers can now reach a new generation of readers worldwide thanks to WEBTOON’s creation of a global ecosystem for digital comics. WEBTOON first entered the European market in 2019, launching WEBTOON services in French and Spanish, with a German service following in 2021. The company’s international business hubs in important markets, including its North American headquarters and operations in Korea and Japan, will grow with the addition of the new WEBTOON corporation.
WEBTOON’s EU organization will enable the business to keep expanding the European digital comics artist and fan ecosystem. By bringing new series and creators to the platform, the firm will also increase the scope of its local content initiatives. This year, WEBTOON intends to add about 100 new series in German and 200 new series Manhua in French. The new series will combine original material from local creators with translated international successes from some of WEBTOON’s most well-known US, Korean, and Japanese producers.
Junkoo Kim, founder and CEO of WEBTOON, said that as a varied new generation of comic book lovers and creators learned about WEBTOON, the digital comics business in Europe was primed for rapid growth. By forming a European business, we would keep developing our influence and dominance in the continent while building a strong network of ardent WEBTOON artists and supporters throughout the EU.
WEBTOON has experienced ongoing growth over the past 12 months, recently announcing a record-high user base of more than 82 million monthly active users (MAU) in January 2022 — an increase of 10 million users from that month last year. The number of daily users (DAU) for WEBTOON’s English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, and Thai services also increased to all-time highs. In addition, the business reported that in January 2021, monthly paid transactions had surpassed 100 billion won and Manhua revenue about 500 billion won.
The WEBTOON French and German services each rank first among webtoon/comic applications on Google Play and the Apple App Store in terms of monthly active users and sales, according to data from data.ai (formerly App Annie), as of February of this year.
The popularity of digital comics from Best webtoons has increased recently. With the support of BTS, the company’s well-known 7FATES: CHAKHO series, which was released earlier this year, achieved 15 million views in just two days, breaking the previous record for views for newly released content.
WEBTOON has gained popularity thanks to an increasing number of Netflix and streaming adaptations, such as Hellbound, All of Us Are Dead, Love & Leashes, and Sweet Home. After the Netflix series started streaming in January, the number of weekly views of All of US are Dead on WEBTOON grew by about 80 times.