Line brings its Q&A app to Taiwan in advance of its plunge into local ecommerce

Taiwanese Line addicts who like a little kawaii with their Quora will soon have a favorite new app. The team behind the popular mobile messenger has rolled out Line Q, a social Q&A app not unlike Yahoo! Answers, for domestic users.

The app works much as one might expect – users register with a pseudonym (you’re not allowed to use your Line ID as your Line Q ID – which is a good thing), choose a few categories they’re interested in, and can then begin posting questions and replying to submissions from other people.

Line Q has been available in Japan since January, but Taiwan marks its first market beyond its native borders.

See: Line releases regional breakdowns for its 490 million registered users

Earlier this week, Line also announced on its official blog that it will launch an ecommerce app in Taiwan. The app will follow the peer-to-peer marketplace model that its Japanese and Thai counterparts implement, and is currently recruiting buyers and sellers to join an early test phase before an eventual launch in November.

Curiously, the Thai app is called “Line Mall” in English, the Japanese app is called “Line Shop” in English, and the Taiwan app will be called “Line Mart” – oh, the joys of language!

Tech in Asia has yet to receive updates on how Line’s ecommerce app has fared in Japan and Thailand. In Taiwan, however, Line’s in a position to make a splash when it comes to mobile shopping. As Focus Taiwan reported back in June, the island’s ecommerce market is expected to reach US$33.7 billion by 2015, and transaction volume is growing at a rate of 20 percent annually. Meanwhile, penetration wise, Taiwan is probably Line’s strongest market. It claims to have 17 million registered Taiwanese users – that’s about 75 percent of the total population.

The app is also deeply embedded in the pop culture zeitgeist, and Line-branded swag is ubiquitous in stores throughout Taipei. It even launched a touring museum exhibit earlier this year. With mobile commerce set to grow around the world, Line is in a great position to cash in.

But Line will also face competition from ecommerce market leader Yahoo! Taiwan. Local tech blog Inside quotes Jacky Wang, head of Yahoo Taiwan’s booming ecommerce divsion, stating that mobile purchases on its brand retailer marketplace (as in, an Adidas distributor sells shoes to me) already accounts for over 30 percent of that marketplace’s total purchasing volume. Yahoo Taiwan has yet to launch a mobile peer-to-peer (as in, Sally sells me her Adidas shoes) ecommerce marketplace mobile app – but when it does, it will go head-to-head with Line Mart. The resulting competition will see an old global giant fight against an aspiring one.