Kakao mobile social games made £205.8m in the first half of 2013

Korean social network now has more than 30m players, 180 games and ambitions for global expansion.
South Korean mobile social networking firm Kakao is quietly becoming a powerful platform for social games, judging by figures it has announced for the first half of 2013.
Kakao, whose KakaoTalk messaging app has more than 100m users, launched its games service at the end of June 2012, providing a Facebook-esque social backbone for multiplayer mobile games.
One year on, there are now 30m people playing Kakao's catalogue of 180 games. The company says that those games generated revenues of 348bn Korean Won (around £205.8m) in the first half of 2013, up from 118bn Won (£69.8m) in the second half of 2012.
That's a sharp 194% increase, and one that Kakao claims is benefitting independent mobile games developers, not just big firms. It says that six of the 10 top grossing games on its network were made by small or medium-sized firms.
Eight games have been downloaded more than 10m times, while two – Anipang for Kakao and Dragon Flight for Kakao – are past the 20m mark.
What's startling about Kakao's rise to gaming prominence is the amount of money being made, in contrast to what's still a relatively small number of players. That's a big opportunity for developers, but also a potential threat to bigger fish in the social gaming world, like Facebook.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2013/jul/16/kakao-games-revenues-2013?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487