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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.  ↩

Japanese youths love Line. But is social fatigue setting in?

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Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million. When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas. Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social…

LINE_Hello_Friends_2013_Japan_0483

Japanese mobile marketing research company Livigen conducted a survey of 200 students about their usage of social network applications. When asked about which social network apps they use most frequently, 65% of respondents answered Line, 29% said Twitter, and 5% Facebook (see chart below). Back in August at its ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ conference, Line Corporation announced that among its 230 million registered users to date, 47 million come from Japan. That’s a pretty hefty figure considering that the country’s population is about 130 million.

When asked why they prefer Line, many students responded that most of their communication with friends happens there, phone calls are free, and its an easy way to get in touch with friends. Students who favor Twitter cited its ease of use, the ability to read tweets by celebrities, and the general wide variety of information, stories, and photos. Students who like Facebook say they like to find out what friends are up to, and they also like how it helps them keep in touch with friends overseas.

Looking at the social space outside of Japan, we have seen quite a few reports this year about ‘Facebook fatigue’. This may also be true for social networks in Japan, and not just for Facebook either. Livigen asked Line users if they feel and fatigue toward using the mobile chat service. 8.5% responded that they feel a strong sense of fatigue, while 16.5% answered that they felt somewhat tired of it. That’s a total of 25% showing some weariness. As for heavy users of Twitter, 15.5% responded that they feel some fatigue, while 7.5% said the same for Facebook.

socialnetworks-students-Line

Line and Twitter are both popular among young people, but for Facebook, kids tend to open an account as part of their job-hunting process. Although kids are connected with their friends on Twitter, its ‘at-your-own-pace’ characteristic allows for a more loose connection. In contrast, all notifications you get on Line (messages, stamps, invitation to Line game, etc.) are addressed to you specifically, and people often feel more pressure to respond.

Admittedly this survey used a very small sample, but Line is undoubtedly the dominant communication tool among kids in Japan. The closed nature of this social network provides comfort and security that many mainstream users want.

Closed can be good, but is it too closed? Figuring out the right distance to put between friends is mostly a responsibility left to the social network users. For now, Line appears to have hit the sweet spot for Japanese users, but it remains to be seen whether it stays that way.

How we socialize online is, of course, always changing.

Japan’s Mixi acquires Line’s match-making subsidiary for $10.9M

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Japanese social networking giant Mixi has acquired Line’s subsidiary Diverse, a company focusing on the marriage business and match-matching, for 1.07 billion yen (about 10.9 million dollars). Diverse is an entity that has been around since 2000, perhaps best known for running its match-making site YouBride.jp, which currently has more than 780,000 members, with 66% men and 34% women [1]. According to YouBride’s own figures, their female membership skews a little younger than their male membership (see chart below). Mixi will acquire all shares of Diverse, which will officially split off from Line in December. But Diverse will proceed with further development on its own independently. For Mixi, this acquisition means that its business portfolio is growing increasingly diverse in recent months. Readers may recall that back in September we featured six of their mobile applications, including Nohana, which was spun off by the company in August. [Via Livedoor News] Checked at the time of writing.  ↩

youbride

Japanese social networking giant Mixi has acquired Line’s subsidiary Diverse, a company focusing on the marriage business and match-matching, for 1.07 billion yen (about 10.9 million dollars).

Diverse is an entity that has been around since 2000, perhaps best known for running its match-making site YouBride.jp, which currently has more than 780,000 members, with 66% men and 34% women [1]. According to YouBride’s own figures, their female membership skews a little younger than their male membership (see chart below).

Mixi will acquire all shares of Diverse, which will officially split off from Line in December. But Diverse will proceed with further development on its own independently.

For Mixi, this acquisition means that its business portfolio is growing increasingly diverse in recent months. Readers may recall that back in September we featured six of their mobile applications, including Nohana, which was spun off by the company in August.

[Via Livedoor News]


  1. Checked at the time of writing.  ↩

Line Camera photo app surpasses 50 million users

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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

Now with 200M game downloads, Line Corporation adds MapleStory title

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Line Corporation made some headlines earlier today when it announced that its games lineup had surpassed 200 million downloads [1]. There are more than 230 million registered users for its Line chat platform, and many of them are spending time with the company’s many casual game titles to date. What’s most interesting to me about Line’s gaming success so far is that it has all been with relatively unremarkable IP. Its biggest game to date in terms of downloads has been Line Pop with over 32 million, followed by Line Bubble with 25 million. But I’m expecting even bigger figures when Sonic Dash comes to Line this fall. Nexon’s Maple Story celebrated its tenth anniversary this year In addition to announcing its lofty downloads milestone, the company also rolled out Line MapleStory Village today. This is a farm/town-building game from the successful Maple Story franchise by Nexon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Line MapleStory Village is currently available in Japanese, English, and traditional Chinese, and is available worldwide with the exceptions of China and South Korea. This game should fare well around the Asia region even without those big markets [2]. If you’d like to give it a…

LINE MapleStory Village

Line Corporation made some headlines earlier today when it announced that its games lineup had surpassed 200 million downloads [1]. There are more than 230 million registered users for its Line chat platform, and many of them are spending time with the company’s many casual game titles to date.

What’s most interesting to me about Line’s gaming success so far is that it has all been with relatively unremarkable IP. Its biggest game to date in terms of downloads has been Line Pop with over 32 million, followed by Line Bubble with 25 million. But I’m expecting even bigger figures when Sonic Dash comes to Line this fall.

Nexon’s Maple Story celebrated its tenth anniversary this year

In addition to announcing its lofty downloads milestone, the company also rolled out Line MapleStory Village today. This is a farm/town-building game from the successful Maple Story franchise by Nexon, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year.

Line MapleStory Village is currently available in Japanese, English, and traditional Chinese, and is available worldwide with the exceptions of China and South Korea. This game should fare well around the Asia region even without those big markets [2].

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it now as a free download for iOS and Android. Check out the trailer below for a preview.

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


  1. The milestone was reached on September 6th, according to the company.  ↩

  2. And even though it is a stupid farm/town-building game…  ↩

Sonic Dash to play important role in LINE’s expansion plans

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Last week we had a chance to attend Line Corporation’s Hello Friends in Tokyo event, where the company announced it would be adding video calls, music, and e-commerce to its repertoire of services. But also announced on the day were a wide range of new games, including perhaps the most recognizable franchise to come to the Line platform, Sonic Dash. It is expected to be released this fall for iOS and Android. Sega’s Sonic Dash is already a fairly established title (see its previous gameplay trailer below), having broken into the top five iOS games rankings in 15 countries since its initial launch back in March. When it launches in the fall, it will likely be Line’s highest profile game thus far. At the Line event, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda, noted: Sonic is a famous character in Japan and abroad, and in order for us to move into the global market, I consider this title to be very important. In the subsequent Q&A session, Line CEO Akira Morikawa said that activity in its North American expansion can probably be expected around the end of this year. With a strong line-up of games, led by familiar…

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Line’s Jun Masuda announces the upcoming addition of Sonic Dash

Last week we had a chance to attend Line Corporation’s Hello Friends in Tokyo event, where the company announced it would be adding video calls, music, and e-commerce to its repertoire of services. But also announced on the day were a wide range of new games, including perhaps the most recognizable franchise to come to the Line platform, Sonic Dash. It is expected to be released this fall for iOS and Android.

Sega’s Sonic Dash is already a fairly established title (see its previous gameplay trailer below), having broken into the top five iOS games rankings in 15 countries since its initial launch back in March. When it launches in the fall, it will likely be Line’s highest profile game thus far. At the Line event, the company’s chief strategy and marketing officer, Jun Masuda, noted:

Sonic is a famous character in Japan and abroad, and in order for us to move into the global market, I consider this title to be very important.

In the subsequent Q&A session, Line CEO Akira Morikawa said that activity in its North American expansion can probably be expected around the end of this year. With a strong line-up of games, led by familiar titles like Sonic, Line’s mobile content portal looks well positioned to win over that market. The company is in talks with game developers around the world in an effort to create what it says is a symbiotic relationship, offering games wider distribution on a global scale.

Line is a newcomer as a game publisher, and it has only been in the game business for 12 months or so. But already it has seen considerable success as a sort of gateway to native app games. It was disclosed at the event that Line Games earned 2.6 billion yen (or over $23 million) in monthly revenue for July 2013.

Other games announced that last week’s event include the Rainbow Chaser (which will feature Line’s own characters), Puzzle Bozzle (from Taito), MapleStory Village (NHN), Let’s Golf (Gameloft), Shake Spears (from Russia’s Alawar Entertainment), and more.

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.

Check out the sights from LINE’s ‘Hello Friends’ event [Photos]

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Yesterday we had the pleasure of attending Line Corporation’s ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event, the second such conference for the Japanese mobile powerhouse. If you’d like to replay the event in its entirety, it’s still available over on Ustream. We covered all the highlights here if you’d like a quick rundown. But for those who couldn’t attend the event in person, we thought we’d share some of the sights that weren’t shown on the livestream. If you check out the photos below, you can see some of the fun that took place outside the conference hall, most of which focused around Line’s characters and a merchandise shop. It was somewhat symbolic that Line held this event right next to Tokyo Disneyland, perhaps making a subtle statement about their aspirations for the Line character business, now being rebranding as ‘Line Friends.’ For even more information on the growth Line, check out our interactive Line Timeline, now in both English and Japanese.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of attending Line Corporation’s ‘Hello Friends in Tokyo’ event, the second such conference for the Japanese mobile powerhouse. If you’d like to replay the event in its entirety, it’s still available over on Ustream. We covered all the highlights here if you’d like a quick rundown.

But for those who couldn’t attend the event in person, we thought we’d share some of the sights that weren’t shown on the livestream. If you check out the photos below, you can see some of the fun that took place outside the conference hall, most of which focused around Line’s characters and a merchandise shop.

It was somewhat symbolic that Line held this event right next to Tokyo Disneyland, perhaps making a subtle statement about their aspirations for the Line character business, now being rebranding as ‘Line Friends.’

For even more information on the growth Line, check out our interactive Line Timeline, now in both English and Japanese.

Reception at the event. At this point I'm suspecting there will be lots of green today.
Reception at the event. At this point I’m suspecting there will be lots of green today.
Line's fancy press passes. Very cool.
Line’s fancy press passes. Very cool.
Line characters
Line characters guard the entrance to the auditorium
Line's in-house media crew getting ready
Line’s in-house media crew getting ready
CEO Akira Morikawa on stage
CEO Akira Morikawa on stage. Nice suit.
Line animations play before intermission
Line animations play before intermission
During the 20 minute break, attendees could check out the line store. These three greet you at the entrance.
During the 20 minute break, attendees could check out the line store. These three greet you at the entrance.
Line Pop and Line Pokopang roulette. Win some balloons and other merch.
Line Pop and Line Pokopang roulette. Win some balloons and other merch.
Line character James etched in frosted glass on the store window
Line character James etched in frosted glass on the store window
Line characters were in attendance too, getting pics taken with attendees
Line characters were in attendance too, getting pics taken with attendees
more photo ops
more photo ops
Line character figures near the entrance
Line character figures near the entrance
A souvenir from the show. Line character donut. I bit into his head!
A souvenir from the show. Line character donut. I bit into his head!

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

Line Pokopang is another inexplicably popular puzzler

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Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan. The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process. Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan. The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is…

Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan.

The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process.

Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan.

The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is still doing as well as it is.

I’ve been playing the game a little bit, and while I’m not usually very interested in Line’s casual titles, this one is not so bad – but it most certainly will not be eating into any of my Puzzle & Dragons time. Pokopang is a little pushy in asking you to involve your friends on Line, and I expect that aspect has helped its popularity too.

It is pretty cute too, I suppose.

If you’d like a better idea of how Line Pokopang works, check out our demo video above. To try it for yourself, you can get it as a free download from the App Store or Google Play.

pokopang pokopang-3

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.