Analytics firm Wiseapp has published some new estimates for YouTube’s popularity in South Korea. Well, its popularity on Android smartphones anyway. The company reckons that YouTube had nearly 34 million Android users in South Korea at the end of 2019, up 6% year-on-year.
This, in a country with a population of 51.5 million, as TechCrunch points out, where Android is thought to have an 80% share of the smartphone market. Wiseapp also claims that YouTube’s total minutes viewed on its Android app in South Korea grew by 38% in 2019.
This is all good news for the Korean music industry and the K-Pop artists who are capitalising on YouTube both at home and overseas. “When I look at the top 25 most-watched [K-Pop] videos on YouTube in 2018, 90% of views are from outside of Korea,” said YouTube’s Sun Lee at our recent NY:LON Connect conference, in her session about South Korea.
We’d also point you to our recent country profile on this market, which included the estimate that there are now more than 10 million paying music subscribers in South Korea.
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