THE BRIDGE

tag Line Camera

Line Camera photo app surpasses 50 million users

SHARE:

Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday. That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world. To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August. The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about…

line-camera

Line Corporation announced today that its Line Camera application has surpassed 50 million users as of yesterday.

That application was initially released back in April of 2012, and like all of Line’s other apps, it has ridden the popularity of the Line chat platform (or Line Channel) to reach a number of app markets around the world.

To date Line camera has done very well, becoming a top 10 iOS photo app in 20 countries, and a top 10 Android photo app in 14 countries – primarily in Asia and South America. The app supports the main languages in those regions, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, as well as Thai and Spanish which were added in the 5.0 update in August.

The company will apparently be targeting female users with new beauty features are coming in early October to Line camera, including capabilities to adjust skin brightness and smoothness, fix skin blemishes, as well as functions to make your face smaller and eyes bigger. You can see these functions in screenshot below provided by Line. If you look closely there is also an ‘volume’ button with what looks like a breasts icon too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about this last feature.

For more information on the history of Line to date, check out our interactive Line timeline.

line-camera home

LINE continues to be the perfect app distributor, as its photo app hits 40M downloads

SHARE:

Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1]. I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow. Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March. For more information on the…

line-camera-40-million-campaign

Line Corporation has announced today that that its photo decoration and effects app Line Camera has surpassed the 40 million downloads mark. That’s a pretty significant accomplishment, although one wonders how many of those 40 million have stuck with the app given the abundance of alternatives available in Line’s home market of Japan [1].

I was curious to look at the pace of Line Camera’s growth, given that I hadn’t checked in on the app in over a year (see chart below). After its initial launch in April of 2012, the app picked up 5 million downloads in its first month, and went on to snag 20 million just after New Years. With 40 million announced today, it’s likely that Line Camera’s growth will continue to be completely dependent on how fast the Line chat platform – which is how it is distributed – can grow.

Still, there are lots of photo apps that didn’t have such an effective distribution platform as Line, most notably services like Papelook (said to have been downloaded by half of Japan’s young girls who own iPhones), or FX Camera, which had 25 million users as of this past March.

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

line-camera


  1. I was one of the early downloaders, and I’m no longer using it. Although admittedly, it probably would have been weird for me to keep doing so.  ↩

Driven by games and stamps, Line Corporation’s reports 1Q revenue of over $57M

SHARE:

Japan’s Line Corporation (whose chat app recently hit the 150 million users milestone) disclosed its latest sales figures yesterday, showing first-quarter revenue of 5.8 billion yen (or over $57 million). That’s up 92% compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Line’s sales consists of games, stamps, official accounts, and sponsored stamps. Games amount for about half of its sales, while its stamps business accounts for about 30%. The mobile chat app is now a sort of a global phenomenon, having expanded to places like Thailand, Taiwan, Spain, and Indonesia. But it’s interesting to see that the majority of its sales, about 80%, come from its home market in Japan. Micro-payments for digital contents are not new to Japanese people, going back even to the days of feature phones. We have always paid for music, ringtones, e-books, games, and dedicated carrier-dependent servies such as i-mode. Whether we’re using a feature phone or a smartphone, small and frequent purchases tend to hit your wallet hard. On a related note, there is great article over on Pando Daily from Tom Limongello titled The Japanese Art of Monetization where he explains that Japan’s mobile space has always been monetized. It’s very much…

sd-line-image-press

Japan’s Line Corporation (whose chat app recently hit the 150 million users milestone) disclosed its latest sales figures yesterday, showing first-quarter revenue of 5.8 billion yen (or over $57 million). That’s up 92% compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

Line’s sales consists of games, stamps, official accounts, and sponsored stamps. Games amount for about half of its sales, while its stamps business accounts for about 30%. The mobile chat app is now a sort of a global phenomenon, having expanded to places like Thailand, Taiwan, Spain, and Indonesia. But it’s interesting to see that the majority of its sales, about 80%, come from its home market in Japan.

Micro-payments for digital contents are not new to Japanese people, going back even to the days of feature phones. We have always paid for music, ringtones, e-books, games, and dedicated carrier-dependent servies such as i-mode. Whether we’re using a feature phone or a smartphone, small and frequent purchases tend to hit your wallet hard.

On a related note, there is great article over on Pando Daily from Tom Limongello titled The Japanese Art of Monetization where he explains that Japan’s mobile space has always been monetized. It’s very much worth a read if you have a moment to spare.

Line Camera, one of Line’s 24 apps, is also doing very well, having accumulated 30 million downloads worldwide as of the end of April. The popular photo app launched its own stamp shop on April 2nd, helping reach the top of sales charts in Google Play’s photo category in 45 countries. On the iOS app store, it managed to grab the top spot in the photo category in 12 different countries.

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.

Meet 5 of Japan’s top photo apps

SHARE:

In comparison to other countries around the world, Japan has a special affinity for camera apps. In fact, according to a recent report from Flurry Japanese mobile users are more likely to use photo apps than mobile users in any other country. We’ve written about a number of them over the past couple of months, and I thought we take her to expect look at a few of the best [1] ones today. So here they are, in no particular order: FX Camera ¶ One of the earliest entries in the Japan photo app space was FX Camera which launched way back in 2009. This app isn’t very flashy, but it has a solid repertoire of filters and effects would certainly come in handy on any mobile device. Since its launch a few years back it has accumulated more than 25 million downloads, certainly an impressive feat for its parent company Bit Cellar. See our recent review of FX Camera for more information. Download: iOS | Android Otaku Camera ¶ This app doesn’t have the sort of download counts that other apps on this list have achieved, but it was developed by one of Japan’s hottest startups, Tokyu Otaku Mode….

In comparison to other countries around the world, Japan has a special affinity for camera apps. In fact, according to a recent report from Flurry Japanese mobile users are more likely to use photo apps than mobile users in any other country.

We’ve written about a number of them over the past couple of months, and I thought we take her to expect look at a few of the best [1] ones today. So here they are, in no particular order:

FX Camera

fx-camera

One of the earliest entries in the Japan photo app space was FX Camera which launched way back in 2009. This app isn’t very flashy, but it has a solid repertoire of filters and effects would certainly come in handy on any mobile device. Since its launch a few years back it has accumulated more than 25 million downloads, certainly an impressive feat for its parent company Bit Cellar. See our recent review of FX Camera for more information.

Download: iOS | Android

Otaku Camera

otaku-camera

This app doesn’t have the sort of download counts that other apps on this list have achieved, but it was developed by one of Japan’s hottest startups, Tokyu Otaku Mode. What Otaku Camera does is turn your pictures into an anime/manga style graphic. Last month the application surpassed the 1 million downloads mark, and we expect that with the company’s vast fan base that Otaku Camera will continue to grow. Check out our video demo below for more info about it how it works.

Download: iOS | Android

SnapDish

snapdish

Just like in the West, Japan has more than a few food photography apps. Perhaps the most notable foodie photo app is SnapDish. The application was launched way back in May 2011, and since then it has catalogued more than 1.7 million pictures of food. Interestingly, it primarily encourages users to share pictures of food they’ve cooked themselves, as opposed to just snaps taken in a restaurant.

The company has aspirations on global markets too, and is already available in a variety of languages in addition to Japanese and English. For more information about the startup check out out interview with them from back in February.

Download: iOS | Android

Papelook

papelook

Just a few weeks ago the Japanese photo application Papelook surpassed the 4 million downloads mark on iOS, launching a new Android app at that time as well. Papelook is not your typical photo application insofar as you’re not really going to be taking photos with it. But rather you can use it to combine and repurpose a lot of the photos that you’ve taken with other apps to build collages. I had a lot of fun testing this one, as you can see in the video demo below. The application is very much targeted at girls and it definitely falls into ‘Kawaii apps’ application category.

Download: iOS | Android

Line Camera

line-camera

Line Camera took off very quickly since it was first released nearly a year ago. And with more than 20 million downloads since then, largely thanks to the wildly popular Line chat app as a distribution platform, this camera application hit number one in the photo category in 28 countries, mostly around Asia. The application allows for lots of fun photo decoration, following the same style as the popular stamps/stickers for which Line Corporation has become famous.

Download: iOS | Android

Honorable mention:

See also: 5 photo apps with fantastic skin filters that Japanese women prefer


  1. Like any list of this sort, this is a subjective ranking and I’m sure that there are many great camera apps from Japan that we have missed. If so, let us know! We’d be happy to hear from you.  ↩