Line’s Revenue for Q4 2012 Was $58 Million

For the first time since NHN debuted its popular chat app, Line is publicly announcing its quarterly earnings – and it’s a whopper.

Line’s earnings climbed 92 percent from the last quarter to hit JPY 5.82 billion (US$58 million). And a breakdown of where those revenues come from, you ask? Well, 50 percent is from in-app purchases across its 24 different social games, and 30 percent from the 191 stickers that are sold in the chat app. 80 percent of that $58 million came from Japan. That underlines Line’s strength in Japan – but also its reliance on the Japanese market.

Worldwide, Line has over 150 million registered users right now. Most of those users, despite the revenues, are not in Japan. Line has recently been making aggressive moves in Southeast Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, and even the US. But given the numbers, Line will need to work hard on monetizing outside of Japan.

Line’s financial numbers are interesting when compared to its key competitor up in South Korea, KakaoTalk, which reported $45 million in revenue and $7 million profit for 2012 at out Startup Asia event earlier this year. Although the startup KakaoTalk is still catching up to Line, those numbers are hard to ignore. WhatsApp, as tight-lipped as ever, has never revealed its revenue numbers but that hasn’t stopped users on Quora from speculating that its revenue figure must be around $45 million. Over in China, Tencent has been in no hurry to make money from WeChat, and will only start to monetize it later this year with a new social gaming platform.