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Line rolls out ‘Sticons’, first on Android

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With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with. You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.

With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with.

You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.

line-sticons

Japan’s Line meets 2013 goal of 300M users, wants half billion in 2014

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Japan’s Line Corporation, which previously stated that its goal for this year was to hit 300 million users, has just announced that it has met that target as of today. And perhaps even more ambitiously, the company says it wants to hit 500 million by the end of 2014. Check out the chart of Line’s user growth to date in their chart below. That 500 million total would put it up among the world’s social big boys, but still trailing Facebook which has over a billion users. China’s WeChat is its primary Asia rival, but that service (in my view) may not have the global appeal that Line has. Line’s most recent sales figures (for July to September 2013) were up 48% on the previous quarter, with 60% of its sales coming from games, and 20% coming from its stamps business.

LINE_Hello_Friends_2013_Japan_0569

Japan’s Line Corporation, which previously stated that its goal for this year was to hit 300 million users, has just announced that it has met that target as of today. And perhaps even more ambitiously, the company says it wants to hit 500 million by the end of 2014.

Check out the chart of Line’s user growth to date in their chart below.

That 500 million total would put it up among the world’s social big boys, but still trailing Facebook which has over a billion users. China’s WeChat is its primary Asia rival, but that service (in my view) may not have the global appeal that Line has.

Line’s most recent sales figures (for July to September 2013) were up 48% on the previous quarter, with 60% of its sales coming from games, and 20% coming from its stamps business.

line-300-million

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…

LINE_Hello_Friends_2013_Japan_0566

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.

line-earnings

(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.  ↩

With 230M registered users, LINE reveals 3 new services, global expansion plans

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For Japanese coverage of Line’s event, see here and here. Line Corporation held a press conference today in Tokyo where it revealed some information about its progress this far, as well as its plans for the near future. It was at this same ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event last year that the company announced that it would expand from a chat application to a mobile platform. Now hosting everything from games to manga to news, Line is has become a mobile content portal that is wildly popular in Japan and quickly growing around the world. The company disclosed the most recent user numbers for its Line service, with 230 million registered users. Of those, 47 million come from Japan, 18 million from Thailand, 17 million from Taiwan, 15 million from Spain, and 14 million in Indonesia. Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and widely on Line in times of disaster There have been over 7 billion messages and 1 billion stickers sent as of August 2013. And as we previously mentioned, the company made 9.77 billion yen in Q2, a 66.9% increase over the same period last year. CEO Akira Morikawa took the stage to give some…

line morikawa

For Japanese coverage of Line’s event, see here and here.

Line Corporation held a press conference today in Tokyo where it revealed some information about its progress this far, as well as its plans for the near future.

It was at this same ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event last year that the company announced that it would expand from a chat application to a mobile platform. Now hosting everything from games to manga to news, Line is has become a mobile content portal that is wildly popular in Japan and quickly growing around the world.

The company disclosed the most recent user numbers for its Line service, with 230 million registered users. Of those, 47 million come from Japan, 18 million from Thailand, 17 million from Taiwan, 15 million from Spain, and 14 million in Indonesia.

Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and widely on Line in times of disaster

There have been over 7 billion messages and 1 billion stickers sent as of August 2013. And as we previously mentioned, the company made 9.77 billion yen in Q2, a 66.9% increase over the same period last year.

CEO Akira Morikawa took the stage to give some brief updates about the service. He revealed that the app is seeing 63,000 new users every hour. And on Google Play, Line is one of the few apps to exceed 100 million users. He says that while it is a service born in Japan, it now has 80% of its users elsewhere.

Morikawa also pointed out the usefulness of Line during disasters:

Information with high public value can be disseminated faster and more widely on Line in times of disaster. It is starting to become a sort of infrastructure. We’d like to turn like into a common language across the world, and our growth strategy is based on this.

Jun Masuda
Chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda

Jun Masuda, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, said that there have been 290 million downloads of Line’s family of apps. This includes 48 million for Line Camera, 14 million for Line Play, 13 million for Line Card, and 8 million for Line Brush. For some Japan-specific services, good progress has been seen too. Line Manga for example has 3 million downloads.

As we have noted before, Line’s repertoire of games has been successful as well, with over 190 million downloads. It was also revealed for the first time today that Line Timeline has 73 million users around the world. It has grown by 330% says Masuda.

Masuda also disclosed that sticker sales, which are a huge part of the company’s business, now accounts for more than 1 billion yen per month (or more than $10 million).

He spoke about the company’s merchandise licensing business, noting the sales of Line character goods already account for 4 billion yen in sales. He added that the company will be rebranding the character business as ‘Line Friends’, and they hope to accelerate that business in the future.

Line's director Takeshi Idezawa
Line’s director Takeshi Idezawa

He also explained that in some developing countries, many people would like to buy stickers and play games, but they can’t because of the credit card barriers. He explained that moving forward they will support Paypal and prepaid cards as well, the latter starting in Japan at major convenience stores like 7-eleven and Lawson.

After Masuda, Line’s director Takeshi Idezawa took the stage to speak about the company’s marketing business. He explained that the nature of mobile messaging lets companies develop an emotional bond with their customers. He pointed to Lawson has a standout company using the platform, now with more than 10 million friends. 500,000 of these have used the company’s Line-distributed coupons in stores.

Idezawa added that they also want to expand their marketing efforts to new regions across the globe, using it in other markets as they have thus far here in Japan.

Line Games

Line Sonic Dash
Line Sonic Dash

Masuda spoke about Line’s game platform, disclosing that they had 2.6 billion yen in monthly revenue in July 2013. Line Games are based on your real social graph, playing with your actual friends. And based on that idea their games have been casual and simple enough for anyone to start playing at any time. ‘Ease of start’ was important for any games they bring to their platform. He says that Line Pop now has 32 million downloads and 4.3 billion yen in total revenue. Line Bubble has 25 million downloads and 1.9 billion yen in total revenue.

Both Line Wind runner and Line Pokopang had 14 million downloads a piece to date, the latter being particularly successful having just launched in May.

Line Games now aspires to go global, after experiencing success in Japan and around Asia. To that end, they will be rolling out a new lineup of games, including Sonic Dash through coorperation with Sega.

Our next target is to turn Line into a universal language.

CEO Morikawa said that Line is the fastest growing globalized service, supporting a 17 languages starting this month, with more to come. They are trying to be the top instant message brand in each country, and to do this they need more locally relevant content, and they have processes in place for that. He provided the examples of Thailand and Spain where they have been moving up while competitor What’s App has not been doing quite as well.

They also have involved local celebrities to help promote Line in different regions like Indonesia, India, and Mexico. Line is now targeting 300 million by the end of this year, and they will be active in the US and Europe to reach that goal. When asked about North America in the Q&A session, Morikawa says that we can expect to see some activity near the end of this year. He added “Our next target is to turn Line into a universal language.”

Video calls, Music, E-commerce on the way

Masuda again took the stage to explain that the company’s new 3C plan, focusing on communication, contents, and commerce. He introduced a few new upcoming services, first announcing video calls. This is not entirely surprising, given the recent trend of companies jumping into mobile video.

He also revealed that Line Music will be rolled out soon, not a separate app but rather included in Line’s basic functions. Masuda said that you’ll be able to listen and share with friends too, although it will be curious to see how many music labels are on board with this when it launches. The service will not be just for Japan, but outside the country as well.

The third new service announced will be Line Mall. The idea here, says Masuda, will be to create a new shopping experience on Line.

Development of these new services are being finalized and they are coming in the fall of 2013.

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

Video Call

LINE MUSIC

LINE MALL001

Japanese social network for couples marks 5M monthly pageviews

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See the original story in Japanese. Pairy is a Japanese social network for couples. It was first launched back in June of 2012, but Timers, the startup behind the app, has just released a new version of the app. According to the company, its monthly pageviews count hit 5 million recently, and they are hoping for even more potential by adding new features. In recent years we have seen many social networks for people in close relationships, like Path (launched in October of 2011), Couple (November 2010), and Between (February 2011). After you approve a connection request from your significant other on the app, you can create a sharable album, enjoy chatting, find dating spots, and share an event calendar. With this latest renewal of the app, there will be a new feature that allows you and your partner to look back on your memories together. According to CEO Toshimasa Takahashi and COO Koichiro Tawa, the company conducted a user survey that showed users are keen to browse memories of the past. They explained: Almost a half of our female users look back on what they have talked about with their boyfriends using a chat app or Line. But in…

pairy_main

See the original story in Japanese.

Pairy is a Japanese social network for couples. It was first launched back in June of 2012, but Timers, the startup behind the app, has just released a new version of the app. According to the company, its monthly pageviews count hit 5 million recently, and they are hoping for even more potential by adding new features.

In recent years we have seen many social networks for people in close relationships, like Path (launched in October of 2011), Couple (November 2010), and Between (February 2011).

After you approve a connection request from your significant other on the app, you can create a sharable album, enjoy chatting, find dating spots, and share an event calendar. With this latest renewal of the app, there will be a new feature that allows you and your partner to look back on your memories together.

According to CEO Toshimasa Takahashi and COO Koichiro Tawa, the company conducted a user survey that showed users are keen to browse memories of the past. They explained:

Almost a half of our female users look back on what they have talked about with their boyfriends using a chat app or Line.

But in terms of looking over memories, the Line mobile app or existing social networks would probably suffice. This is why the startup has added a new feature to the app, allowing users to plan a date with their partner online. They added:

We are also providing third party information about possible date spots. We conducted a survey about the “couples market” and learned that it is worth as much as 1.3 trillion yen (approximately $13.27 million) if you include things like restaurants, hotels, and gifting etc. Our app allows users to arrange reasonably (priced) but remarkable date planning.

The duo previously worked at Japanese ad agent Hakuhodo back in 2010. They submitted a business plan for the original concept of the Pairy app at the company’s in-house business contest. They went on to launch the startup together with three engineers who previously worked with DeNA, and subsequently it was chosen for the first batch of Docomo’s incubation program.

Since the app targets a very niche demographic, it will need a more deliberate monetization models than conventional social media such as Line or Facebook. Although typical social media apps highlight their messaging or chatting features, it is interesting to see what the newly added date planning feature will bring to this app.

pairy_dateplanning

LINE reports solid Q2 earnings, aims for 300M users by year’s end

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See also our Japanese report on Line’s Q2 earnings Line Corporation has announced its second quarter earnings for 2013, highlighted by revenue of 12.8 billion yen (or about $132 million). That amounts to 348.9% growth over the same time the previous year, and 45.3% over the previous quarter. The company attributed most of this to its core LINE business, which alone accounted for 9.77 billion yen (or just over $100 million), growing 66.9% over first quarter revenue as you can see in the chart above. The announcement notes that 53% of its revenue was in-game purchases, and 27% through sticker purchases. Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa expects more good things for his company as the year progresses: We will continue to actively invest in new opportunities and conduct new challenges so as to become a common piece of communication infrastructure worldwide, and aim to achieve 300 million users within 2013. This news is pretty solid validation of the company’s gaming business especially, which includes titles like Line Pop, Wind Runner, Neko Copter, and recent addition Fluffy Diver. We’re looking forward to following Line in its effort to become the world’s preferred mobile portal, and we’ll keep up updated on its…

line-q2

See also our Japanese report on Line’s Q2 earnings

Line Corporation has announced its second quarter earnings for 2013, highlighted by revenue of 12.8 billion yen (or about $132 million). That amounts to 348.9% growth over the same time the previous year, and 45.3% over the previous quarter.

The company attributed most of this to its core LINE business, which alone accounted for 9.77 billion yen (or just over $100 million), growing 66.9% over first quarter revenue as you can see in the chart above. The announcement notes that 53% of its revenue was in-game purchases, and 27% through sticker purchases.

Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa expects more good things for his company as the year progresses:

We will continue to actively invest in new opportunities and conduct new challenges so as to become a common piece of communication infrastructure worldwide, and aim to achieve 300 million users within 2013.

This news is pretty solid validation of the company’s gaming business especially, which includes titles like Line Pop, Wind Runner, Neko Copter, and recent addition Fluffy Diver.

We’re looking forward to following Line in its effort to become the world’s preferred mobile portal, and we’ll keep up updated on its progress in the future.

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

Introducing our Interactive LINE Timeline

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One of the stories that we have been watching closely on this site is the progress of Line, the chat app that is wildly popular here in Japan and rapidly expanding abroad. In the same spirit of our recent Japan Internet Map, here is our second interactive production – our Line Timeline. It brings together the company’s major updates since it’s original launch way back in 2011, all the way to yesterday’s astounding 200 million downloads milestone. We’re still experimenting with these information rich presentations, but as with last time, the goal here is to provide you with as many details and links as possible. But we had fun with a chat bubble design and even added some fun stickers! We don’t ask anything in return, but if you like it and want to share it with friends, it would certainly be good incentive for us to continue this kind of more time-intensive work! As always, your feedback is welcome! Click to view interactive Line Timeline

line timeline
Preview

One of the stories that we have been watching closely on this site is the progress of Line, the chat app that is wildly popular here in Japan and rapidly expanding abroad.

In the same spirit of our recent Japan Internet Map, here is our second interactive production – our Line Timeline. It brings together the company’s major updates since it’s original launch way back in 2011, all the way to yesterday’s astounding 200 million downloads milestone.

We’re still experimenting with these information rich presentations, but as with last time, the goal here is to provide you with as many details and links as possible. But we had fun with a chat bubble design and even added some fun stickers! We don’t ask anything in return, but if you like it and want to share it with friends, it would certainly be good incentive for us to continue this kind of more time-intensive work!

As always, your feedback is welcome!

Click to view interactive Line Timeline

Unstoppable: Popular mobile chat app Line surpasses 200M users

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Line Corporation has announced today that its popular mobile chat application has surpassed the 200 million registered user milestone. This comes not too long after it passed 150 million back on April 30th. For the mathematically impaired, that means an additional 50 million users in the 11 weeks since that time – a few weeks quicker than its previous 50 million. The Android version of the chat app also reached the 100 million downloads milestone on July 18th, no doubt driven by increased adoption around the Asia region. Line began its campaign for the Indian market earlier this month, the first of the major Asian chat apps to do so. The company has yet to really make a serious push for the US market, but we expect to see that sometime this year. 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_users
Line’s journey to 200 million

Line Corporation has announced today that its popular mobile chat application has surpassed the 200 million registered user milestone. This comes not too long after it passed 150 million back on April 30th.

For the mathematically impaired, that means an additional 50 million users in the 11 weeks since that time – a few weeks quicker than its previous 50 million.

The Android version of the chat app also reached the 100 million downloads milestone on July 18th, no doubt driven by increased adoption around the Asia region. Line began its campaign for the Indian market earlier this month, the first of the major Asian chat apps to do so.

The company has yet to really make a serious push for the US market, but we expect to see that sometime this year.

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.

Next in Line: Japanese messaging app makes a push for India

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Yesterday Japan’s Line Corporation rolled out a Hindi version of its website (line.naver.jp/hi) as well as two new television commercials targeting the Indian market. This echoes the company’s previous strategy of winning new users in countries like Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Spain. Now with 180 million users, 45 million of which are in Japan, India represents an area of great potential for Line. According to figures from IDC, the nation’s smartphone market grew 74% from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013. That market is overwhelmingly dominated by Android, with budget handsets proving popular. Line’s expansion to date has been fascinating to watch. Back in April we heard the company’s CEO Akira Morikawa explain that their localization strategy does not involve establishing a series of regional offices. They are trying to be a sort of borderless company, in a way. Line will visit a region to do business of course, but the company does not feel a need to be there perpetually. You can check out Line’s new television commercials for India below. It remains to be seen how effective these will be, but based on the company’s track record and India’s growing love of smartphones, I expect things will go very…

line-website-hindi
Line’s website available in Hindi

Yesterday Japan’s Line Corporation rolled out a Hindi version of its website (line.naver.jp/hi) as well as two new television commercials targeting the Indian market. This echoes the company’s previous strategy of winning new users in countries like Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Spain.

Now with 180 million users, 45 million of which are in Japan, India represents an area of great potential for Line. According to figures from IDC, the nation’s smartphone market grew 74% from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013. That market is overwhelmingly dominated by Android, with budget handsets proving popular.

india-smartphone-market

Line’s expansion to date has been fascinating to watch. Back in April we heard the company’s CEO Akira Morikawa explain that their localization strategy does not involve establishing a series of regional offices. They are trying to be a sort of borderless company, in a way. Line will visit a region to do business of course, but the company does not feel a need to be there perpetually.

You can check out Line’s new television commercials for India below. It remains to be seen how effective these will be, but based on the company’s track record and India’s growing love of smartphones, I expect things will go very smoothly.

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.

Telephony and SMS gateway provider Nexmo looks to Japanese market

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See the original story in Japanese. Integration of telephony or SMS with web services can be used for many purposes, like Google’s 2-step verification for its various apps, or user authentication for OTT (over-the-top) services like messaging apps, or for calling engineers for live server monitoring. For web service providers, such integration is typically made possible not by in-house systems but by using third-party telephony/SMS gateway services. The world’s three major players in this space are Twilio, Nexmo, and Tropo. Mr. Woo Kim, the head of Asia Pacific operations at Nexmo, was visiting Tokyo this week, speaking about how the company plans to extend its business to the Japanese market. Nexmo provides an SMS gateway to the Line messaging app for user authentication, and NHN Investment has invested in the company. Kim is a venture partner at NHN Investment as well as an employee at Nexmo. Can you tell us a little about Nexmo? Nexmo was founded in London’s Silicon Roundabout two and a half years ago. We’re headquartered in London, with an office in San Francisco as well. Our services are web-to-phone and web-to-SMS, and to date our customers include messaging apps like Line, Kakao Talk, WeChat, and Viber….

nexmo_logoSee the original story in Japanese.

Integration of telephony or SMS with web services can be used for many purposes, like Google’s 2-step verification for its various apps, or user authentication for OTT (over-the-top) services like messaging apps, or for calling engineers for live server monitoring.

For web service providers, such integration is typically made possible not by in-house systems but by using third-party telephony/SMS gateway services. The world’s three major players in this space are Twilio, Nexmo, and Tropo. Mr. Woo Kim, the head of Asia Pacific operations at Nexmo, was visiting Tokyo this week, speaking about how the company plans to extend its business to the Japanese market. Nexmo provides an SMS gateway to the Line messaging app for user authentication, and NHN Investment has invested in the company. Kim is a venture partner at NHN Investment as well as an employee at Nexmo.

Can you tell us a little about Nexmo?

wookim_portrait
Nexmo’s Woo Kim

Nexmo was founded in London’s Silicon Roundabout two and a half years ago. We’re headquartered in London, with an office in San Francisco as well. Our services are web-to-phone and web-to-SMS, and to date our customers include messaging apps like Line, Kakao Talk, WeChat, and Viber. When these apps authenticate their users, messages are transmitted using our service.

You’re making progress in the Asian market. How important is this region for Nexmo?

Yes. As I mentioned before, we’re providing SMS gateway services for messaging apps, and they are on the rise in the Asian market. That’s why I believe there are market opportunities here. In fact, we get 60% of our entire revenue, or 50% of our profit, from the region.

There are several gateway providers in this space. How do you differentiate?

auth_screenshot

For our product, the most significant differentiation is high quality service. There are multiple routes to transmit an SMS message from one person to another. For instance, when delivering your message from our system to a mobile user subscribing to Indonesia’s Telekomsel, we have seven routes. The SMS scheme typically can’t guarantee to get your message to your recipient. That’s why we select the most reliable one out of the seven available routes to be sure your message is delivered.

In this process, our system monitors connectivity with each telecom carrier all the time using SS7, or Signalling System No. 7. Based on the performance history, the system chooses the best route for delivery by using a different criteria.

Besides e-mail, an SMS message is mission critical since it’s also used for the user authentication process. We have acquired much experience by working with the Line app. And this encourages other messaging app players in Asia to adopt our service for their user authentication needs.

Some web services using other gateway providers have switched to Nexmo. Why is that?

Well, our pricing is probably also one of their reasons, but I believe the main reason is our high deliverability rate, backed by our unique routing technique, as mentioned, and also our efforts to establish direct links with many carriers to reducing transmission relays and network hops.

How do you plan to expand your business in the Japanese market?

It was just six months ago when I took up this post. We just started exploring the market, and finding potential partners from web service companies and startups. We’ll be doing our best to work on many projects with Japanese companies.

During the last few years, OTT services are very hot regardless of location. The rise of such services are causing telcos to strain under the data demands, but it makes new business opportunities for telephony and SMS gateway providers.