As a part of restructuring and bring back the firm to its past form, Yahoo! announced last month it would be closing its offices in South Korea at the end of 2012. The company has done so! Yahoo! today closed all its operations in South Korea.
The South Korean unit was functional for the last 15 years with strength of nearly 200 employees, until today. In the last couple of years Yahoo’s market share in South Korea were declining continuously and users turned more towards competing Web portals, like Naver and Daum. This was the main reason of This was the main reason of Yahoo! being shutting down in South Korea.
Also, Marissa Mayer who was appointed as CEO in July 2012 of the company wanted to focus more on stronger markets, hence the step. In a statement a Yahoo! official had said in October,
“The Korean operation has faced growing challenges over the past few years that now make scaling our business very difficult. This decision is part of our efforts to streamline operations and focus our resources on building a stronger global business that’s set up for long-term growth and success.”
Yahoo! is not the only company exiting South Korea market after facing some fierce local competition. Other foreign companies such as Motorola and HTC have also had difficult time making it in South Korea due to run off by Samsung’s stronger sales.
Yahoo, which once dominated the local search market, is estimated to now claim less than 1 percent of the local market. Locally, the company has been dwarfed by homegrown portal operators such as NHN, Naver.com and Daum.net reports YonHapNews.
