SEOUL, KOREA – Nine of the Google Play Store’s top 10 highest-grossing apps are Kakao games. The other one is the KakaoTalk messenger app, so it is fair to say that the “Kakao Kingdom” reigns supreme.

National mobile games that rake in several billions within a year of release have emerged one after another since Kakao (the provider of global mobile social platform and mobile messenger KakaoTalk) launched Kakao Game at the end of July of last year.

Over the past year, the Kakao game platform has spearheaded growth of the entire mobile game industry. Accumulated sales from Kakao games amounted to KRW 466.2 billion over the past year with KRW 348 billion in the first half of this year, up 194% from KRW 118.2 billion in the second half of last year

Kakao Game’s KRW 466.2 billion in sales over the past year even exceeded the domestic mobile game market’s 2011 total sales.

According to KOCCA (Korea Culture and Content Agency), the domestic mobile game market is projected to hit KRW 918 billion this year and KRW 1.26 trillion next year (more than a 3-fold increase from KRW 316.7 billion in 2010 when South Korea’s smartphone penetration started to take off.

Article provided by etnews [Korea IT News]