Taiwan is an important market for Japan’s Line Corp, creator of the fast-growing social messaging app Line, a company executive said on Tuesday.
“We had a very nice year in 2013,” Kang Hyun-bin, head director of Line Plus Corp, said at a year-end party in Taipei.
The company set up big screens and booths at the party to promote Line games and peripheral products related to their popular characters
Taiwan has become Line’s third-largest market in the world, with more than 17 million registered users, behind only Japan with 50 million and Thailand with 20 million, driven by its partnerships with local companies and the popularity of its oversized emoticons, or stickers, Kang said.
“We were very touched a year earlier, when we had 12 million registered users, and now we’re even more excited,” he said.
Sting Tao (陶韻智), vice president of Line Taiwan Office, said at the party that the company will focus on service expansion, localization and globalization this year, planning to provide more local services, including games, stickers and payment services.
The company will also cooperate with telecoms and release new applications to fight spam messages, he added.
The company is planning to launch a brand store in Taiwan this year, Tao said, but he declined to provide details about a timetable or location.
Line says it conveys more than 7 billion daily messages and more than 1 billion stickers sent by more than 330 million registered worldwide users.
The company has set a target of 500 million registered users worldwide by the end of the year.
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