Can Line’s Messaging App Crack the American Market

Line, the mobile messaging application that has built up more than 110 million customers around the world, particularly in Asia, is hoping to make similar inroads in the United States.

The company, which is headquartered in South Korea, set up an outpost in San Francisco at the end of last year.

“People are really taking to this new way of communicating,” said Jeanie Han, the chief executive of the American offices. “We realize that this could translate over to the Western part of the world.”

Cracking the American market will be tricky.

The iPhone, which has its own free message service called iMessage, is the most popular smartphone among customers of the two largest phone carriers in the United States.
Plus, Line will have difficulty competing with other applications like Snapchat, WhatsApp, GroupMe and Kik that are already popular among people who are looking for inexpensive and easy ways to send free messages to their friends.

Ms. Han declined to share information on what portion of Line’s pool of users is based in the United States other than to say it is “growing nicely.’

In addition to offering free messaging, Line sells games and virtual stickers, which have been very lucrative sources of revenue for the company, says Ms Han. Although virtual stickers are still a new concept to most Americans, Ms. Han says the suite of games her company offers have been extremely popular among Line’s small base of American customers.

“People spend more here in the States than any other top territory relative to the user base,” she said, adding that the United States is a “high priority.”

When Line wanted to build up its customer base in Spain, where text messaging is expensive and data is still relatively cheap, the company introduced a mass-media marketing campaign, airing commercials on local television stations for a month. Ms. Han said those efforts worked, and now Spain is one of Line’s fastest new markets.

To appeal to American audiences, Ms. Han said that Line is working to establish partnerships with local brands, toy companies and movie studios to get customized games and content that American users will recognize and gravitate towards. Right now, most of Line’s games and stickers are steeped in Asian pop culture and feature manga-style characters.

“We want to really really localize our content offering,” she said.

Ms. Han, who has a decade of experience under her belt working in the movie industry, believes that the key to Line’s success in the United States will come from introducing it as a cool social activity, not as a way to save money on messaging.

“I see Line not as a tech company, but as an entertainment company,” she said. “We bring fun to people lives. That I know how to do really well.”