LINE revenue up 70% to 28.1 bn Japanese yen in Q1 2015

LINE Corporation, a provider of the free call and messaging app LINE, said its revenue for Q1 2015 grew 70 percent year on year and 9 percent quarter on quarter to 28.1 billion Japanese yen.

The revenue growth is despite the OTT company offering call and messaging services free of cost to mobile users.
The revenue for LINE Corporation’s core business, LINE, rose 76 percent year on year and 9 percent quarter on quarter to 25.4 billion Japanese yen.

The Monthly Active User (MAU) count for LINE as of March 2015 totals 205 million, with 123 million of that total deriving from LINE’s top four countries Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia in terms of market share. India is not part of the top 4 markets for LINE despite aggressive marketing plans in the country.

LINE Corporation Revenue Infographic

LINE Creators Market, a platform that allows users to sell and buy stickers created by other users, has reached 100,000 sticker sets, the company said. Sticker sales are increasing steadily with a large number of participating creators building excitement for the service.

LINE will focus on growing the service in Thailand and Taiwan.

LINE GAME released 10 titles in the first quarter of 2015. LINE Bubble 2, a bubble-shooting game starring LINE characters, recorded 1.4 million pre-registrants.

LINE: Disney TsumTsum achieved 40 million downloads in February – fuelled by US, Thailand, Taiwan and other markets.
LINE Corporation aims to acquire market share in more countries, and in the four nations where it has already obtained the leading market position.

Takeshi Idezawa, CEO of LINE Corporation, said: “We launched multiple new services in 2014, and in the first quarter of 2015, we have repeated this success. These new services in 2015 are off to a strong start, winning the support of even more users than we initially projected at the start of the year.”

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