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Line’s hockey stick moment: Japanese chat app hits 150 million users worldwide

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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(Read this article in Japanese) We knew this milestone wasn’t far off after Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa noted at the recent Japan New Economy Summit that the Line chat app had 140 million users worldwide. But apparently it became official yesterday that Line has hit the 150 million users milestone. As you can see in the company’s fun commemorative line graph above [1], Line only hit the 100 million user mark this past January, so they seem to be having their hockey-stick moment right now. With more than 45 million users in its home market of Japan, Line will likely be limited to a growth rate that is only as fast as domestic smartphone growth. So Line will have to keep up its overseas expansion, which to date has been pretty good. We recently had a chance to hear Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa speak about their relatively flexible global strategy, and how he hopes they can operate as a sort of borderless company. Line has even seen some success in China where it briefly became the top social app in the Apple App Store. Currently it’s still in the top 20 for that category. Will Line see the…

150-million-user-LINE

(Read this article in Japanese)

We knew this milestone wasn’t far off after Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa noted at the recent Japan New Economy Summit that the Line chat app had 140 million users worldwide. But apparently it became official yesterday that Line has hit the 150 million users milestone.

As you can see in the company’s fun commemorative line graph above [1], Line only hit the 100 million user mark this past January, so they seem to be having their hockey-stick moment right now.

Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa echoed these sentiments again at B Dash Camp in Fukuoka
Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa

With more than 45 million users in its home market of Japan, Line will likely be limited to a growth rate that is only as fast as domestic smartphone growth. So Line will have to keep up its overseas expansion, which to date has been pretty good. We recently had a chance to hear Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa speak about their relatively flexible global strategy, and how he hopes they can operate as a sort of borderless company.

Line has even seen some success in China where it briefly became the top social app in the Apple App Store. Currently it’s still in the top 20 for that category.

Will Line see the same success in the US market? What about Kakaotalk? Line’s Korean counterpart has 86 million downloads globally, and 10 million in Japan – not too shabby either.

There’s also China’s WeChat of course, which has more users than both Line and Kakaotalk combined (about 300 million). But I think overseas growth potential for that app is likely held back by concerns about the made-in-China app which make it a harder sell globally.

(Via AppBank)

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

  1. I wonder if other types of graphs are permitted in the company… “A bar graph, you say? You’re fired!”  ↩

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Line tries to hook kids early, launching toy smartphone with Takaratomy

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Last week we had a chance to hear Line Corporation’s Akira Morikawa talk about his company’s fast and furious global strategy to promote their Line chat application. But it looks like the next few months will see the company quite active marketing to its home market of Japan as well, with a new ‘Line Town’ toy series to be released next month in cooperation with Takaratomy. Line Town, as you may know, is the animation series of the same name that broadcasts on Tokyo TV. Headlining its repertoire of toys will be a sort of imitation smartphone for kids called ‘Line Town MyTouch.’ With the goal of letting kids enjoy Line characters too, this pretend smartphone has a color LCD as well as sliding touch motion designed to look like smartphone interfacing. While there’s not actually a phone function, it looks like this toy handset will use an NFC function to let kids exchange stamps and some messages when one phone contacts another. It will also feature some mini games like picture matching, janken (or rock-paper-scissors), and brain training. The toy phone will be released on August 8, and will be priced at 6825 yen (or about $70). It will…

line-town-mytouch

Last week we had a chance to hear Line Corporation’s Akira Morikawa talk about his company’s fast and furious global strategy to promote their Line chat application. But it looks like the next few months will see the company quite active marketing to its home market of Japan as well, with a new ‘Line Town’ toy series to be released next month in cooperation with Takaratomy. Line Town, as you may know, is the animation series of the same name that broadcasts on Tokyo TV. Headlining its repertoire of toys will be a sort of imitation smartphone for kids called ‘Line Town MyTouch.’

With the goal of letting kids enjoy Line characters too, this pretend smartphone has a color LCD as well as sliding touch motion designed to look like smartphone interfacing. While there’s not actually a phone function, it looks like this toy handset will use an NFC function to let kids exchange stamps and some messages when one phone contacts another. It will also feature some mini games like picture matching, janken (or rock-paper-scissors), and brain training.

line-town-mytouch-2

The toy phone will be released on August 8, and will be priced at 6825 yen (or about $70). It will be available in three colors: pink, green, and blue. Surely Line Corporation is hoping that if they can promote the Line brand to kids at a young age, that they’ll stick with the brand as they get older and buy real smartphones.

Line Corporation will be releasing a number of other toys as a part of its cooperation with Takaratomy, including a character branded version of the Automee-S smartphone and tablet cleaner that we featured back in February. There will also be a Line Town Message Seal Maker, Line Town figures, a ‘tobisau’ pop-up toy, and Line stamps as well (yes, actual stamps). See the pictures below, or Takaratomy’s website for more information. [Via Impress]

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

Line message seal maker
Line message seal maker
Line Automee-S
Line Automee-S
Line stamps
Line stamps
Line pop-up toy
Line pop-up toy

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Japanese chat app Line is making a fortune from stamps — But who’s buying?

SCORE 1,189 Yukari Mitsuhashi Yukari Mitsuhashi
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Line chat app users can now enjoy unique stamps from world famous modern artist Takashi Murakami. The stamps were created to commemorate the release of the movie Mememe-no-kurage, a film which saw Murakami assume the role of director for the very first time. As I’ve written in a past article, stamps are often cited to as the reason behind chat apps’ huge success to date, especially in Asia. Silicon Valley’s Path released original stickers within its app at beginning of March, a move that makes sense given that the company is eager to expand to the Japanese market (having also hired a business development person here). Line provides both free stamps and premium stamps which cost about 170 yen (about $1.80) for a set of 40. The platform sells over 300 million yen (about $3,126,000) worth of stamps per month. That works out to about about 60,000 downloads of premium stamps a day. So who is actually buying these stamps? According to a survey conducted by Ceres, its people in their 30s who are the most frequent buyers with one in four people purchasing stamps. This is followed by users in their 20s at 21.8%. Only 10% of teenagers and…

Line-stamps

Line chat app users can now enjoy unique stamps from world famous modern artist Takashi Murakami. The stamps were created to commemorate the release of the movie Mememe-no-kurage, a film which saw Murakami assume the role of director for the very first time.

As I’ve written in a past article, stamps are often cited to as the reason behind chat apps’ huge success to date, especially in Asia. Silicon Valley’s Path released original stickers within its app at beginning of March, a move that makes sense given that the company is eager to expand to the Japanese market (having also hired a business development person here).

Line provides both free stamps and premium stamps which cost about 170 yen (about $1.80) for a set of 40. The platform sells over 300 million yen (about $3,126,000) worth of stamps per month. That works out to about about 60,000 downloads of premium stamps a day.

So who is actually buying these stamps? According to a survey conducted by Ceres, its people in their 30s who are the most frequent buyers with one in four people purchasing stamps. This is followed by users in their 20s at 21.8%. Only 10% of teenagers and people over the age of 50 are paying for stamps.

The survey also revealed that official character stamps by corporate brands are very popular with 61% of respondents saying they have downloaded such stamps. On April 2nd, Line kicked off its new campaign where stamps could be redeemed for free after buying certain products. The very first product on board is a Japanese blend tea by Coca Cola Japan. The company worked in collaboration with a major publisher with its hit comic series as GTO and Moteki.

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

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Line’s ‘Wind Runner’ game for iPhone tops App Store charts in Asia

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Line Corporation pushed an update to its Wind Runner iPhone game on Tuesday, and since then the title has been top free iOS app many countries around Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and its home market of Japan. The game is a side scrolling platform which was well received upon its release back in mid-February [1]. You can check out our video demo below to get a better idea of how the game plays. The game is promoted through the company’s popular Line chat application, which is the main reason why it has seen this sort of success. To date, the application has 130 million+ downloads, the majority of which are in the Asia region. Wind Runner is also doing reasonably well on Android, ranked as the number two app overall in Taiwan and Singapore, and number four overall in Thailand and Japan. It looks as though Line Corporation’s strategy of releasing television commercials in local markets is working really well. The company recently surpassed 10 million downloads in Spain, and it has been running a commercial there too. As you might expect, Wind Runner is doing well there also, ranked as the sixth most popular free…

line-wind-runner

Line Corporation pushed an update to its Wind Runner iPhone game on Tuesday, and since then the title has been top free iOS app many countries around Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and its home market of Japan. The game is a side scrolling platform which was well received upon its release back in mid-February [1]. You can check out our video demo below to get a better idea of how the game plays.

The game is promoted through the company’s popular Line chat application, which is the main reason why it has seen this sort of success. To date, the application has 130 million+ downloads, the majority of which are in the Asia region. Wind Runner is also doing reasonably well on Android, ranked as the number two app overall in Taiwan and Singapore, and number four overall in Thailand and Japan.

It looks as though Line Corporation’s strategy of releasing television commercials in local markets is working really well. The company recently surpassed 10 million downloads in Spain, and it has been running a commercial there too. As you might expect, Wind Runner is doing well there also, ranked as the sixth most popular free iOS app. Spain the first market outside of Asia where Line Corporation has seen significant success. But you can expect more countries to follow, particularly the US market later this year.

One country where Wind Runner hasn’t really succeeded yet is South Korea, where rival chat platform Kakaotalk dominates in place of Line. Interestingly, Kakaotalk has been winning some ground in Japan, passing the 10 million downloads mark back on March 24.

For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, including Wind Runner, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

  1. Note that NHN Japan recently rebranded itself as ‘Line Corporation.’  ↩

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