300 Million Milestone
Korea’s top portal operator Naver said on November 25 that its free messenger service LINE marked the milestone of an accumulated 300 million subscribers across the world two years and six months after its launch. The figure also doubled seven months after the service drew 150 million users in April this year. LINE was launched in Japan in June 2011.
Such a performance is remarkable in terms of the time to get to 300 million users. It took five years and eight months for the US-based messenger carrier Facebook to get that far.
Industry sources say that the free messenger service is expected to reach another milestone of 450 million downloads from global users by 2015. Since its launch, LINE has expanded the service to some 230 countries in 14 languages, including English, Chinese, Spanish, and Indonesian. The messenger service is carried by its affiliate Naver Japan.
The company attributed the brilliant growth particularly to an increase in users in the Middle East and Asia after the messenger service included free voice calling and emoticon features in late 2011. The number of users in Central and South American nations including Brazil and Mexico is also increasing.
According to the parent company Naver, 90 percent of LINE users are located overseas with Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan listed as its three biggest markets. Japanese users reached around 50 million, followed by Thailand with 20 million, Taiwan with 17 million, Spain with 15 million, and Indonesia with 14 million.
LINE plans to continuously pursue its overseas expansion by strengthening marketing activities in larger markets such as China, Europe, and the US, adding more platform features to the service by teaming up with content providers.