SEOUL, KOREA - With the ever-growing popularization of smartphones, the number of people who access portals such as Naver through PCs has declined sharply.
According to an Internet market research firm Nielsen Korean Click, the unique visitor and page view numbers and average stay on time for Korea's top three portals such as Naver, Daum and Nate marked a sharp decline over the past three to four years.
This indicates an increase in the number of people who access through smartphone web services and applications rather than through personal computers.
For those who have visited Naver through PCs for the month of March 2013, their page views totaled 18.98 billion, down 21.8 percent from 24.26 billion recorded in May 2009 when Naver launched its mobile web and app services. Naver launched its mobile web service in June 2009 and app services in October 2010.
Daum's March page views totaled 20.47 billion, down 44.7 percent from 37.02 billion in July 2008. Daum launched mobile web services in August 2008 and app services in April 2010. During the same period, Daum's average stay on time fell by 36.9 percent to 215 minutes from 341 minutes, with its unique visitor number falling by 5 percent to 27.95 million people from 29.43 million people.
Nate's unique visitor number also fell by 37.8 percent to 15.56 million in March 2013 from 25 million in May 2010 when it did not launch mobile webs and app services. Nate kicked off mobile webs and app services each in June 2010 and December 2010.