Several news sources report, LDH[J] (Livedoor Holdings, ex-Livedoor) is now in the final phase to be acquired by NHN, South Korea’s largest provider in the Internet portal service. The sales value of LDH’s capitalization is considered between USD75M and 85M, which will be fixed mid-April.
NHN shares 60% of user access to all search portal sites in South Korea. After the Livedoor scandal, in order to survive, LDH has been focusing their management resource on providing blog platforms and surrounding services.
In Japan, NHN is running three services of NAVER[J] (search portal site), Hangame[J] (game community site) and Hange.jp[J] (game community site exclusively for cellphone access), but all are suffering from not being ranked in the top in each service category. The company has used to be running a social network service called CURURU[J] since June 2005 as well, but it was forced to shut down last month because of the lack of user engagement. The company shifted their policy to devote themselves to selected service categories, renewed Hange.jp last month and added some features including real-time communication menu like Twitter’s timeline and GPS-enabled services on it.
With this acquisition, LDH will complete restructuring the set of subsidiaries whose number used to reach 44 at the peak and will be able to focus on dealing with investor claim for damage.
See Also:
- Hangame: Japan’s No. 1 online gaming site
- NAVER, Korean based new communication search services landed on Japan, again
Masaru IKEDA