Line’s character James is out of money.
Line announced yesterday that it is closing its shopping app Line Mall in Japan. The service, started in December 2013, will shut down completely by May 31.
Line Mall let people sell products without a listing fee and handled shipping logistics for users. It faced strong competition in the mobile ecommerce space, notably from Japan’s most popular flea market app Mercari and female-focused Fril.
Line Mall moved from Japan’s third most popular flea market app in January 2015 to the second most popular in June of the same year, according to a survey by Mobile Marketing Data Labo.
In a statement to CNET Japan, the Japanese social giant says Line Mall was gaining users but will be shut down so it can focus on its more traditional ecommerce products such as Line Flash Sale, a Woot-like highly discounted daily sale. Line told Tech in Asia that resources from Line Mall will be moved to these existing ecommerce services.
Line has been struggling to grow its social network in the face of the unstoppable Facebook and Whatsapp. Line only added 10 million new monthly active users from Q1 to Q4 2015, while Whatsapp is rocketing up in leaps of a hundred million every few months, recently topping a billion monthly active users.
From March 15, new user registration on Line Mall as well as item posting and sales will be terminated ahead of the total shutdown at the end of May. Line responded to an email stating that Line Mart, the Taiwanese and Thai versions of the app, will not be affected.
Update on March 2 2016, 3:32pm JST: Article was updated to include LINE’s response about future plans.
Editing by Steven Millward
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