Line Digital Frontier, a Japanese webtoon company announced it has purchased the Japanese electronic book company eBOOK Initiative Japan, the Korean publication Korea JoonAnd Daily reported. Line Digital Frontier happens to be a subsidiary of Naver Webtoon and has its own webtoon app in Japanese named Line Manga.

eBOOK Initiative, on the other hand, is an e-book service provider based in Japan that started operations in 2000. With more than 270,000 books to offer, eBOOK Initiative is also among the largest content providers in the country. Its acquisition by Line Digital Frontier will allow Naver Webtoon to grow and expand further in Japan.

“This acquisition comes as a decision for us to take a leap in the Japanese market, the biggest comics market in the world,” Naver Webtoon CEO Kim Jun-koo said in a press release. “We will enhance Line Manga’s influence in the Japanese content market and expand the webtoon ecosystem along with eBOOK Japan.”

A huge majority of eBOOK Initiative’s transaction volume, to the tune of about 95 percent, comes from comics. Apart from this, the company also offers e-books while a subsidiary of it named Bookfan offers printed books. With this acquisition, Naver Webtoon will be better placed to compete with Kakao, the largest player in the webtoon space in Japan. Kakao’s webtoon app, Piccoma happens to be the top webtoon app in Japan.

Naver Webtoon, meanwhile is also slated to establish a presence in France sometime soon. This comes in the wake of Kakao launching its Piccoma app in France on March 17. Kakao also started operations in other parts of Europe last September.

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