Cowon Play pushed to the point of application for rehabilitation ... Normal Hwa 'dark'
· Reporter Lee Ha-eun (
grace@sisajournal-e.com)
· Approval 2022.09.08 17:11
· 0 comments
Going downhill due to the emergence of MP3 and smartphones... Court decision likely to come out in the next month
Turning to mobile game, the main business, but no box office game
출처 : 시사저널e - 온라인 저널리즘의 미래(
http://www.sisajournal-e.com)
[Sisa Journal e=Reporter Lee Ha-eun] Cowon Play, which had been successful in the IT industry with MP3 players and PMPs, recorded a slump in its new mobile game business, and even applied for rehabilitation. In the absence of a core revenue source, the court is awaiting a decision to start the rehabilitation proceedings next month.
According to the IT industry on the 8th, it is expected that a decision will be made next month whether the Cowon Play court will start the rehabilitation procedure. Currently, Cowon Play is in crisis of delisting due to a sharp drop in sales due to worsening profits and an increase in operating losses.
COWON, the predecessor of Cowon Play, is an IT company that sold digital devices such as MP3 players and PMPs in the early 2000s. In 2006, Cowon introduced the PMP 'D2', which combines the functions of an MP3 player and an electronic dictionary, and gained great popularity. At that time, the D2 was also selected as the best digital audio product of 2007 by Dapp Review, an American digital audio site, beating Apple's 'iPod'.
However, with the advent of smartphones, the main products, MP3 and PMP, were pushed back and faced a crisis. In 2016, the Chinese game company Shin Times took over the company and changed its route to the mobile game business. In 2016, he first entered the game market with the release of 'Naejeon 1942' in Korea, followed by publishing 'Naejeon M' in 2018, generating more than 10 billion won in sales every year.
However, as the publishing contracts for the two games, which accounted for 70.6% of total sales, expired in December 2020, the mobile game business also faced a crisis. As of fiscal year 2020, stock trading was suspended after receiving a refusal of opinion in the audit.
Last year, Cowon started to reverse the mood by recruiting CEO Lee Seung-hoon, who served as the head of Neople's business planning department. It has published more than 10 games, including the shooting game 'Fortress V2', the webtoon-based game 'Honey Blood' and 'Became the Count's idiot', the casual puzzle game 'Hojo Pop', and the RPG game 'The Skull 2'.
However, it failed to recover due to contract cancellation and box office failure for some games. Only this year, three publishing contracts, including Honey Blood, Became a Count's Crazy, and The Skull 2, have been terminated. Cowon stated in a public notice that it was “cancellation of the contract for reasons attributable to the other party.”
Performance also deteriorated due to the cancellation of the publishing contract and the absence of a revenue source. Sales in 2020 halved from 17.5 billion won to 6.8 billion won in 2021. Sales in the first half of this year were 1.2 billion won, down 70% from the same period last year. The cumulative operating loss in the first half of this year was 2.7 billion won.
In March, Cowon changed its name to Cowon Play and started to overcome the crisis. Currently, Cowon Play has applied to the Seoul Rehabilitation Court to initiate the rehabilitation procedure and is awaiting the court's decision. On the 5th, the court made a decision on the application for property preservation disposition and the application for a comprehensive injunction. After that, it is expected to decide whether or not to start the rehabilitation procedure within the next month through an interrogation of the representative.
An official from the legal circle said, “The fact that the preservative measures have been taken means that the provision of additional collateral or repayment of loans is prohibited, and it is literally an order to maintain the status quo.
“The court will first examine the insolvency situation and the debt excess situation. After the decision to start, we investigate the corporate value to find out whether it is appropriate for the company to go through the rehabilitation process.”
A company that has applied for the commencement of rehabilitation should have the possibility of new sales even if sales are declining. In other words, it is possible to obtain the opinion that it is appropriate to proceed with the corporate rehabilitation procedure only when there are factors to evaluate the corporate value highly.
Although Cowon Play's main business is still mobile games, there are no box-office successes following naval battles. Of the eight games registered on Google Play, seven have recorded between 10 and 10,000 downloads. This is significantly lower than Naval Battle 1942, which recorded 1 million downloads, and Naval Battle M, which recorded more than 100,000 downloads.
An official from Cowon Play said, “We are developing and publishing IP games based on various IPs.
출처 : 시사저널e - 온라인 저널리즘의 미래(
http://www.sisajournal-e.com)
Cowon Play, which was pushed to the revival application... (www-sisajournal--e-com.translate.goog)