Now it’s time to take a close look at a small but competitive business making a difference for the Korean economy. This is the third installment in the series of businesses that made an impression at Creative Korea 2014. This week we take a close look at Malang Studio, a mobile contents developer that was cited as a new startup that made its mark in the global market at this year’s Korea Contents Awards. What is the content that Malang Studio is introducing to the world? Here’s Malang Studio’s Chief Design Officer Choi Rak-ho to tell us more about the company.

Malang Studio is a startup company built by five college students in the winter of 2011. These co-founders had first met as interns at a large conglomerate. We had all agreed back then that we wanted to make something that could reflect our own thoughts. We found that we got along great, which encouraged us to set up our own business. Our main business area is developing mobile applications and our signature app is Alarmmon. The characters in the application are growing in popularity and we’re branching out to character merchandising and webtoon and game production.

The five co-founders first met at the Samsung Software Membership program in 2011 when they were just college students. They banded together to set up a company because they each had a specialty area, such as photography or games or video processing. Each member put his or her talent into the company and came up with five different items in a short span of time. One of them was Alarmmon, which was released in December 2011.

In short, Alarmmon is a mobile alarm application. We questioned why an alarm had to sound the same every day. There was very little variety in the alarm sounds as well. People around the world heard the same ring or buzz or bell tones. We thought it would be interesting to make unique alarm tones. The first tones were animal sounds. Then we started developing an alarm that people can not only hear but also see with interesting characters.

Alarmmon, a character alarm application, was born when the founders questioned a convention. The alarm was the second most-often-used function in a smartphone, but people had to listen to only a limited number of tones. Malang Studio questioned the smartphone’s uniform alarm service and began to develop a new alarm application that would stimulate both the eyes and ears with an array of characters. Every morning cute characters, including a hen, a cat, and a hamster, would sound raucous alarms to wake sleepyheads. For those who can sleep through an aural attack, Malang Studio installed games into the alarm app. One of them is a survival-type game in which an egg breaks when the alarm is not turned off in time. This function motivates a person to wake up in time and play the game to keep the egg intact. This youth-oriented idea has made Alarmmon one of the hottest mobile applications now.

If I may boast a little, our application is number one in the local alarm app industry. Ordinary mobile phone alarms take music saved in a phone or pre-set tones that come with the phone. But our Alarmmon uses various animal characters to make interesting sounds, and eye-popping visual alarms, which show an array of animal characters. Our chicken character doesn’t just cluck, but clucks in tune with the background music played for the wakeup game. Or a user can attach a sound file of a fight between a chicken and a cat, or whatever a user likes. I think our Alarmmon is fast becoming young mobile phone users’ favorite app because it sounds out fun, pleasing alarms rather than irritating tones.



Alarmmon was downloaded 500-thousand times in just three months after its release and rose to the number one spot in the alarm app category in six months. Alarmmon has truly become Korea’s most well-known alarm application. Also, unusual for a startup business, Malang Studio has successfully gone global, with Alammon downloaded 17 million times worldwide.

The overall download count is about 17 million, with 10 million originating in China and Taiwan. We are already doing quite well in those two countries, but we’re getting ready to enter Southeast Asian markets, like the Philippines or Thailand. We’re also eyeing Brazil, an emerging power in mobile communication with numerous potential users.

Malang Studio won second place in a mobile app contest held in China last year, which propelled the young company into the lucrative Chinese market. Alarmmon is doing amazingly well in Chinese-speaking countries, recording half a million downloads per month over the first three months since its release. Malang Studio is planning an ambitious venture project in the rest of Asia as well as in the United States and Brazil. Its goal is very clear.

Malang Studio aims to become the number one mobile app developer in Asia. We are currently developing various applications that would make life easier and more fun. Our goal is to make everyone instantly recognize our characters as those of Malang Studio and to have our own distinct characteristics that could define us as a brand.

Malang Studio aspires to be a world-famous contents producer, just like Disney or Pixar. Let’s hope for the day when people all over the world recognize and cheer for Malang Studio characters and contents.