NHN decided to split the company at the director’s meeting on the 6^th, FEB. NHN separate its game and mobile divisions to strengthen its competitiveness for each market. NHN Japan also split Hangame as well. NHN will be focusing on Portal business, while Hangame and LINE Plus/Camp Mobile take care of game and mobile business.

NHN told “It is time to guarantee entrepreneurial independence for game and portal businesses. It is necessary to have the best optimized communication structure, HR system, and organizational culture for each business area. It is positively necessary to split the company to go forward.”

There is nothing to be decided for OrangeCrew and Naver Game yet. OrangeCrew is mobile game developing center for NHN and Naver Game is operating game channeling service with 8 million users. It is possible that they both are merged into Hangame, However it is also possible that NHN will keep PC online, Mobile and developing division and business division separately since NHN split its business into wire and wireless.

NHN also decided to establish new companies to strengthen its mobile service. While Camp Mobile will be taking care of various internet businesses under the current smartphone environment, LINE Plus is for the mobile messenger service with games. Both companies are independent subsidiaries of NHN.

LINE already has over 100 million registered users all over the world and will compete with KAKAO as a mobile game distribution platform. KAKAO is dominating the domestic market, but LINE has been succeeded in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Therefore, it has been known that LINE is a better platform for international market to Korean mobile game developers, especially for Japan.