Messaging app Line hopes to cash in on the popularity of artist-created “stickers” by offering physical merchandise of fan favorites, Line Taiwan Ltd (台灣連線) said yesterday.
The company has invited top sticker creators to start their own online boutiques where fans can take their favorite sticker characters home in the form of hats, pillows, plushy toys and more, the local unit of messaging and communication services supplier Line Corp said.
Although Line is a popular app in Japan, Thailand and Indonesia, the most fanatical users are in Taiwan, where there are about 21 million accounts for a population of 23 million people. The average user in Taiwan spends more than an hour per day on the app, the company said.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
A big part of the app’s popularity in Taiwan is the sticker store, which features sets of animated messages and emoticons. Stickers have become increasingly sophisticated after the company encouraged artists to create and sell their own sets on its store, it said.
The average Taiwanese user purchases 18 sticker sets per year, more than twice the average in Japan.
In the past year, the number of Taiwanese sticker creators grew from 280,000 to 450,000, and the number of sticker sets grew 84 percent to a whopping 6.7 million, the company said.
The top-selling sticker set in Taiwan for three years running is “The Haughty Smelly Cat — Troll Edition,” featuring a lazy, cynical cat with narcissistic tendencies created by a Taiwanese artist known as “Mochi Dad.”
The top 10 Taiwanese creators have generated, on average, NT$290 million (US$9.8 million) in cumulative sticker sales, the company said.
Line Taiwan yesterday also announced a bevy of upgrades and redesigns for the app, including a new karaoke function, a more personalized home page, and “special effect” stickers that trigger background effects.
Additionally, The Black Cat Knows (黑喵知情), the first Taiwanese idol drama about an animal whisperer, is to debut on Line TV and Formosa TV on Aug. 2, the company said.
Line Taiwan said its traffic volume tripled from January to May this year, likely due to increased communication caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the company said it is eyeing growing business opportunities amid the outbreak.
As an information provider, Line could close the gap between e-commerce platforms and offline retailers by enabling “online merge offline” services.
At the moment, people are looking for as little physical contact as possible when making purchases, Line Taiwan managing director Roger Chen (陳立人) said.
For instance, the Line Spot service launched last year, which helps mobile phone users find nearby stores and promotions, has played an important role in the pandemic, Chen said, adding that the service helped people locate which pharmacies had masks available during the outbreak.
Line Spot has 7.7 million users and 27,000 registered businesses, providing services such as food delivery, he added.
Additional reporting by CNA
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure