The platforms Koreans used most were Naver, KakaoTalk, Baedal Minjok and Coupang

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[The Financial News] Digital platform service sales, covering e-commerce, app markets and social media, have surpassed 161 trillion won. By sector, the most widely used digital platforms were Naver for search, KakaoTalk for messaging, Google for app markets, Baedal Minjok for food delivery and Coupang for e-commerce, according to a survey.
According to the "2025 Survey on Value-Added Telecommunications Services" released by the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 3rd, domestic value-added telecommunications service sales reached 502.9 trillion won in 2024, up 15.3 percent from a year earlier. Digital platform sales came to 161.5 trillion won, growing 5.3 percent from the same period a year earlier. That accounted for 32.1 percent of total value-added telecommunications sales.
By business type, service-provision businesses such as food delivery and travel and lodging reservations accounted for the largest share at 30.9 percent. They were followed by goods-transaction businesses such as e-commerce at 27.1 percent and content-provision businesses such as search and games at 15.5 percent.
A survey of digital platform usage conducted from October to December 2025 among 2,500 adult men and women aged 19 to 69 living in all 17 cities and provinces nationwide found usage rates above 90 percent for search (98.7 percent), messaging (98.5 percent), places and maps (96.8 percent), e-commerce (95.6 percent) and video sharing (92.7 percent).
Daily usage was highest for messaging at 91.3 percent, followed by search at 85.8 percent and video sharing at 69.5 percent.
The top platforms by category were Naver Corporation for search at 67.5 percent, KakaoTalk for messaging at 92.5 percent, Instagram for social networking services at 35.9 percent and Coupang for e-commerce at 53.6 percent. Google Play led the app market category at 64.6 percent, YouTube topped video sharing at 78.0 percent, Baedal Minjok ranked first in food delivery at 50.6 percent, ChatGPT led generative artificial intelligence at 68.1 percent, NAVER Map topped places and maps at 50.7 percent, and Karrot Market ranked first in used-goods trading at 88.3 percent.
Over the past three months, the share of users who used two or more platforms in parallel, or multihoming, was highest in e-commerce at 83.9 percent, followed by social networking services at 79.9 percent and search portals at 76.9 percent. By contrast, used-goods trading at 25.9 percent and app markets at 24.9 percent were low.
Over the past year, switching the main platform was relatively common in food delivery at 27.0 percent and e-commerce at 20.9 percent, while it was rare in app markets at 10.3 percent and messaging at 9.4 percent.
In a bundling survey examining e-commerce and over-the-top membership subscriptions and their market impact, 1,347 respondents, or 53.9 percent, said they had subscribed to an OTT telecom membership. The number of subscribers was highest for SKT, followed by KT, LG Uplus and TVING+Wavve.
The ranking of OTT services used independently of membership subscriptions largely matched the ranking of OTT services used by telecom membership, suggesting that telecom bundling has had limited influence in the OTT market.
A total of 1,897 respondents, or 75.9 percent, had experience subscribing to an e-commerce membership. The most-used memberships were Coupang Wow Membership, Naver Plus, Shinsegae Universe Club and U+ Pass, in that order.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said, "We will continue to analyze timely data that reflects market trends and prepare effective policies to revitalize the value-added telecommunications market."
mkchang@fnnews.com Jang Min-kwon Reporter