After Hitting 50 Million Users, Line is Going to China [Report]

The Korean Herald is reporting today that NHN Corp (KRX:035420) plans to launch its popular Line application in China this year. The company’s subsidiary, NHN Japan, today just announced that it had reached the 50 million user milestone after just 399 days. The company is targeting 100 million users by year’s end.

Recently we have seen Line make localization efforts with its app in Thailand and Indonesia with special stickers offered as well as local partnerships.

As for China, NHN would face competition from already established chat apps, most notably Tencent’s WeChat. But Line’s growth thus far has been pretty astounding, so personally I would not bet against it. You can see in the chart below see that for iOS, Line already is being used in China to some extent, ranking respectably in the social networking category for almost a year now according to App Annie.

We’ve reached out to NHN Japan for more on this possible China move, and we’ll let you know if we hear anything.