Though only three years old, Line is facing the same question that many tech titans in Japan face. How can it expand into English-speaking countries?
The company’s messaging app is rampantly popular around the world, with nearly 500 million registered users. However, take a closer look under the hood and find that the app has had limited success with speakers of the global lingua franca. The US, where it claims to have 10 million registered users, ranks last on the company’s list of top 10 markets. Indonesia (second) and India (fourth) also rank but users in those countries are not necessarily speaking English.
Today, the company announced a possible silver bullet for this problem. A joint-venture company, Line Book Distribution, which will market digital content, especially Japanese manga (also called comic books). The company is coming out of the gate with JPY 300 million in capital (US$2.77 million) courtesy of Line, publishers Kodansha and Shogakukan, and digital content distributer Media Do.
That is a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but Line will retain firm control of the new firm. It will hold four of the seven board seats while the other firms claim only one each.
Line Book Distribution is intended to be a global service but will first start by providing content in English and Chinese. The company is a take on Line’s successful, domestic publishing arm, Line Manga, which launched in April 2013. That foray has caught on among its Japanese users, with 80,000 titles available to read and over 8 million downloads. Domestically, Line managed to release the service without forming a joint venture.
Taking manga global is just one of many strategic moves Line has made over the past few months. It established a US$100 million fund for mobile games, beefed up its ecommerce offerings in Japan, and earlier this week announced it will branch out into the financial services industry.
The disparate nature of these initiatives is unusual, but expect to hear the company shed more light on its plans for the future soon. Tomorrow, Line will hold a massive conference in Tokyo, where executives will explain its broad business strategy.
See: Line wants US startups to pitch in toward its overseas expansion
Editing by Josh Horwitz
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