Line Corp, creator of social messaging app Line, has said it will recruit more Taiwanese staff to create localized “stickers” and mobile content. Kang Hyun-bin, head of the Japanese firm’s business development division, said its Taiwan branch plans to hire for marketing, sales, information technology and design. Taiwan is Line’s third-largest market with over 17 million registered users. Only Japan and Thailand have more.
Line’s growth has been partly driven by the service’s oversized emoticons, or stickers. According to Kang, more than 7 billion messages and 1 billion stickers are sent every day, though figures for Taiwan were not available.
“Given that we have a huge number of users in Taiwan, we are planning an expansion of our office to improve the user experience and prepare for the launch of new services,” Kang said.
“The new services are expected to be released from the first half of next year,” he said at a signing ceremony on Tuesday for a strategic alliance with Chunghwa Telecom Co.
Chunghwa Telecom is offering a year of free data usage for its mPro data service subscribers who use Line to make calls and send text messages, stickers, photos, videos and audio clips.
Statistics provided by Informa Telecoms and Media show 19.1 billion over-the-top (OTT) messages were sent every day last year via mobile apps such as Line. This number is expected to reach 41 billion by the end of this year.
OTT refers to delivery of video and audio over the Internet without a multiple system operator being involved in the control or distribution of the content. The provider may be aware of the contents of the Internet protocol packets but is not responsible for, nor able to control, the viewing abilities, copyright and/or other redistribution of the content.
“We have taken a big step toward building a new business model in the mobile market by collaborating with an OTT service provider for the first time in Taiwan,” said Lin Kuo-feng (林國豐), president of Chunghwa Telecom’s mobile business group.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai