Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa talks Line’s global push, hints at IoT integration

Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa talks with Hannah Kuchler of the Financial Times at Rise

For his interview today at Rise Conference in Hong Kong, Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa talked via an interpreter, but he used English to ask one critical question to the audience – how many of you are using Line? A sea of hands shot up, a loyal bunch of the firm’s 211 million monthly active users.

Idezawa, the newly installed CEO of the Japanese messaging juggernaut, was on stage to highlight his company’s growing reach beyond Asia.

Already, Line is the top messaging app in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. Now it’s taking off in Indonesia, where Idezawa says the user base is growing the fastest. But dominance in Asia is not enough.

Looking globally, Idezawa noted the firm’s insight on messaging is still highly defensible and creates a user base willing to embrace Line as a platform for their daily lives. Discussing the creation of Line’s omnipresent stickers, he said, “Face-to-face communication is 10 percent verbal. The rest is non-verbal. With stickers you can put non-verbal communication into virtual communication […] the reason why stickers are popular is because people want to have real, vivid communication.”

Food, taxis, music…

It’s a trick that has been imitated by many other messaging apps, but Line remains a step ahead. The stickers are so popular, especially in Japan, that making and selling self-designed stickers has become a cottage industry. Total sales from Line Creators Market, which launched last February have hit JPY 8.94 billion (US$72 million).

The stickiness of the messaging system cannot be denied, and now Idezawa is banking on users wanting even more Line in their lives. The past year has seen a flurry of developments with Line Manga, Line Music, Line Delivery, Line Taxi, Line Mall, and Line Pay – just to name a few. For Idezawa, not only does this development mean new ways of communication, but it also creates new gateways to the Line ecosystem.

“The key point of our business is communication and we understand that very deeply. We recently released a music service [in Japan], same as Apple and another Japanese company. We achieved the biggest success in the area because we have combined music and messaging. For example, when you want to say ‘I love you’ to your girlfriend, you might hesitate. But now you have a new option and can send that message via a song with a title of I love you,” he explained.

In order to attract new users to Line, Idezawa told the audience the company is looking into how they can ride the internet of things (IoT) trend sweeping the tech world. “Hardware needs to be controlled by something. And that will be the messenger. For instance, we connect Line to the refrigerator, the refrigerator will tell you how many beers you have via Line,” he explained. Judging by the enthusiastic applause from the audience, it might not be so hard to find early adopters.

As for Line’s future growth? Idezawa expressed confidence in the firm’s prospects. “Of course we believe we can grow more […] After a certain period of time, the market will be consolidated and only two or three major players will remain.”