Now with over 280M users worldwide, Japan’s Line focuses on user satisfaction

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Today Line Corporation disclosed its sales figures for the months of July to September 2013. Total sales were 19.1 billion yen, up 48% from the previous quarter. The sale figures for its Line business totaled 9.9 billion, up 58.3% from previous quarter. (15.6 billion in gross sales) 60% of sales are from games, 20% from stamps, and official Line accounts and sponsored stamps make up the rest.

The company also announced provided some updated statistics. Its chat application is used by over 280 million users worldwide, and attaining number one share among messaging app in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. The app is seeing encouraging growth in India with more than ten million users to date. Latin America, Turkey, and Italy are among regions where Line is growing well. The company also announced today that France’s Bouygues Telecom will promote Line on its mobile portal [1]. That will certainly help its efforts in Europe after its initial successes in Spain.

Line now has 39 game titles including the popular Line Pop, and over 300 well-known characters are being used as stamps. Company CEO Akira Morikawa elaborated on the company’s strategy, saying that the company’s priority is set on enhancing user satisfaction rather than increasing sales.

Line recently launched its Line Collaboration Account designed specifically for vendors of daily consumer goods. The company has already partnered with a nation-wide convenience store chain Lawson and drug store Matsumoto-Kiyoshi. Line’s existing official accounts have proven effective with over 99 corporate accounts opened to date with the number of subscribing users exceeding 200 million. Of those, a whopping 37.6% have gone to offline stores to use coupons distributed through the app. With the new Collaboration Account, brands can distribute coupons and product promotions to their users.

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(Written with Yukari Mitsuhashi)


  1. On a bit of a sidenote, it was (mildly) interesting to hear the phrase ‘Born in Japan’ used to refer to Line in this announcement. It came from a Bouygues Telecom rep, but clearly Line is ok with that terminology. I’ve heard some questions in the past as to whether or not Line is truly a made-in-Japan service. To me, this is further validation that it is – not that there was really that much doubt to begin with.  ↩