Aiming to become a smartphone SNS of 100 million users worldwide in 2012
TOKYO, Dec. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Naver Japan Corporation ("Naver Japan", headquarters in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Morikawa Akira -- the CEO) announced that downloads of its free voice call /messenger smartphone application 'LINE' (http://line.naver.jp) has reached 10 Million on December 25th, 2011, in only 6 months after its release.
LINE is a smartphone application that allows its users to enjoy free voice calls and messages, regardless of country or carrier. Since its launch on June 23rd, 2011, it has been used in approximately 200 countries around the world, mainly in Middle East and Southeast Asia, not limited in Japan. Since the release of voice call function on October 4th, 2011, LINE enjoyed a sharp increase in downloads, reaching to 5 million total downloads on November 8th, 2011, 4 and a half months after release.
The number of users has kept increasing since then, mainly in East Asia, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, seeing 1 million downloads per week.
It has enjoyed continued increase of downloads even after emergency service maintenance due to the service trouble that emerged on Dec. 18 until Dec. 19, exceeding 10 million downloads 6 months since release.
Comment by Jun Masuda, Chief Strategist & Senior Manager of Business Strategy Department, Naver Japan:
"Thanks to support from many users, LINE has grown up to become the number one domestic smartphone mobile messenger, in terms of number of users.
"Regarding LINE's share of registered users by country/region, Japan accounts for 40 percent and outside of Japan 60 percent, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, mainly in East Asia.
"Facing a paradigm shift from PCs/feature phones to Smartphones, this fact indicates that LINE has become recognized as a standard of communication application for smartphones.
"Also, because it is a service covering basic communication such as messages or calls, 90 percent of all users are active users (Ratio of unique users who launched the application more than once a month), actively utilized to communicate with friends and family.
"This fast growth of LINE, 10 million users in 6 months, overwhelms that of the top international social networking sites such as Facebook, taking 28 months (852 days) and Twitter, taking 26 months (780 days) to reach the same milestone, making us realize the enthusiasm of our users' response.
"In 2012, we plan to implement marketing activities in Asian countries step-by-step, aiming to reach 100 million users mainly in Japan and other Asian countries.
"By early 2012, we also plan to provide a video call feature, release a PC client version and a smart tablet version of LINE, in addition to improving the popular voice call function, aiming to expand our service to more users."
*1 source：The 10 million user mark: Facebook reached it in 852 days, Twitter in 780 days, and Google+ in 16 days.
Media Contact:
Satoshi Yajima
Naver Japan
Email: press@naver.jp
