Kamcord mobile-gaming video platform launches in Korea and Japan

While Google wages its battle with Twitch, another company is hanging around and finding its niche on mobile.

Kamcord, a startup that is providing mobile gamers with a way to record and livestream their gaming on Android and iOS, is launching in Japan and Korea today.  To ensure a successful launch in those important, highly lucrative markets, the company has enlisted the help of top YouTube talent in those countries for games like Minecraft and Puzzle & Dragons. Kamcord has already used this strategy in the West, and it has seen success with it — and it believes that it can continue to build up its audience even as Google makes it easier for people to livestream and record on Android.

“We’re already seeing a huge amount of downloads from non-English speakers, so we want to be super aggressive with expanding internationally,” Kamcord developer Adi Rathnam told GamesBeat. “We already had the teams in Japan and Korea, which is why we picked those two countries to start with. But they also happen to be two of the biggest mobile gaming markets.”

This comes as the company sees increased engagement numbers in the West. The top 8 Kamcord partners, many of whom specialize in Clash of Clans, have more than 300,000 followers on Kamcord, and the average audience members spends 20 minutes a day on the app. That’s up from 18 minutes a day just a few months ago.

But while the company is seeing growth and bringing on new gamers, it is also keeping an eye on the competition. Google recently introduced ways to enable people to livestream and record gamepay from the YouTube Gaming app. And people can also record from the Google Games app. YouTube Gaming is still new, but Google Games is on nearly every Android owners device, but Rathnam says that Kamcord isn’t too concerned about this.

“Google’s native stuff — we haven’t seen a lot of traction for that,” he said. “You often see zero livestreams for mobile games on YouTube, meanwhile all the top Clash of Clan streamers are on Kamcord. Most surprisingly, our app is ranking ahead of YouTube Gaming on iOS and Google Play.”

Kamcord credits this to having a focus. YouTube Gaming can do a lot, but it’s confusing on which app you need to do what. Meanwhile, Kamcord has spent years building up its brand as a video solution for mobile gamers.

“I think by having so many different products, they’re creating confusion,” he said. “But they are also spending most of their focus on Twitch, so mobile is an after thought for them.”

So, for now, Kamcord is charging ahead. And it seems like it has a chance to build up a loyal, Twitch-like audience on the mobile side of the equation before the other competitors in the space can figure out how to approach it.