Free Voice Call/Messenger Application 'LINE' to Reach 3 million Total Downloads

Reached 600 thousand daily downloads since release.
1 million total downloads in 2 days.

TOKYO, Oct. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Naver Japan corporation is pleased to announce that 'Line', a free voice call /messenger mobile application (http://line.naver.jp) has surpassed its 3 million download level (iPhone/ Android total ) since its launch about 4 months ago.

'Line was launched as a free group-messenger application available on Android, iPhone and feature phones on June 23rd.Since the update of 'free voice call' and 'stamp/emoticon' functions on October 4th, Line enjoyed a sharp user growth, witnessing as much as 300,000 daily downloads mainly from Middle East and SoutheastAsia, which later recorded 2 million total downloads on October 14th .

October 14th, LINE recorded its highest number of daily downloads - 600 thousand. The accumulated downloads made on both 14th and 15th of October totaled more than 1 million counts, and the number of LINE downloads exceeded 3 million on October 15th.

Naver Japan will continue to improve the features in LINE which will be the leading communicative means in this new era of smart phones.

The following are corrections of facts related to LINE that have been wrongfully reported through some foreign media outlets or social media, including Twitter and blogs.

• LINE's message transmission fee
  
  There have been reports stating that a fee is charged when transmitting messages from LINE, since the messages are SMSs. However, SMS are used only after a verification code is issued, and fees are not generated for messages exchanged between users, since messages are sent via packet transmissions.

• Shake it! feature
  
  There have been reports stating that personal information, such as telephone numbers, are leaked to an unknown third party when the "Shake" feature is used. However this is a feature that allows users to easily make "friends" with other users without the use of the users' mobile phone number or LINE ID.
  
  When the 'Shake' function is activated, the name and icon of other LINE users, who are also using the same function nearby, is displayed. In such case, unless both users add each other as 'friends', one-sided requests will not be sufficient to create a "friendship".
  
  Even after registering as 'friends' with the Shake function, personal information such as phone number and LINE ID will not be disclosed to others. Thus, users' personal information will never be exposed to strangers.

Media Contact:

Satoshi Yajima / Tomomi Kaneko
Naver Japan
Email: press@naver.jp