LINE Milstones in 2015
In Febuary, LINE started a global CSR campaign by signing a global partnership agreement with Unicef to license LINE characters for plush toy and stickers. The funds raised through the global partnership between UNICEF and LINE will be used for children's relief, especially for the betterment of health, nutrition, and basic education of children in developing countries. This month, LINE also launched LINE@, an application that allows business users to utilize LINE to reach out to customers, and which is offering a free trial in Thailand until March 31, 2016.
In March, LINE Webtoon, a digital comics service, launched the Challenge League campaign, which gave an opportunity for creators to show their talents by publically distributing their comics via LINE Webtoon. Currently there are more than 1 million weekly readers and more than 3,500 comics available in the app.
In April, LINE launched the new game LINE Bubble 2 during the long Thai holiday period coinciding with the Songkran festival.
In May, LINE stepped into the music industry by launching the LINE MUSIC app.
In June, LINE stepped into the finance industry by launching LINE Pay. The service gained more than 1 million registered users within 1 month after launch. LINE also celebrated its fourth year anniversary this month on June 23.
In August, LINE released the location-sharing app LINE Here.
In the last quarter, October, LINE Thailand announced its first Managing Director, Ariya Banomyong.
In November, there were 2 anniversaries: LINE Webtoon’s first year anniversary and LINE Game’s third year anniversary. LINE also launched a new game, LINE One Piece Treasure Cruise. Furthermore, ahead of Thailand’s gift-giving season, LINE released LINE Giftshop, a new way of giving gifts through LINE. All the new services and features launched in the year 2015 serve as steps for LINE to become more vital to users’ daily lives.
LINE Milestones in Numbers for 2015
On the business side, LINE Official Account, a service that allows companies to communicate directly to their customers, currently has 228 accounts, divided into 19 categories such as banking, e-commerce and online services, communication, and artists. On the user side, LINE Creators Market, a market that allows creators to sell their original stickers on the LINE Store, currently has more than 60K of registered Creators Market creators in Thailand. The top three best-selling creator stickers sets in 2015 were Jazzspkk, Hello Sunny and BearPlease. On the game side, there are currently 20 games available in Thailand. One of the most popular games is LINE Let’s Get Rich, which currently has more than 23 million downloads. This game was awarded “Best Mobile Game of the Year” two years in a row. On the LINE family app side, LINE TV, an app that features a wide variety of entertainment content, currently has more than 7.2 million downloads. As of the end of 2015, the most viewed contents were “Ugly Duckling”, which received more than 178 million views and “Hormones 3”, which received more than 173 million views. LINE MUSIC, a subscription-based music streaming service, achieved more than 5 million downloads in just 4.5 months after launch. The first LIVE Cast via the LINE MUSIC official account got more than 700K views. As of the end of 2015, there has been more than 7 million songs shared via LINE and social networks.
