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LINE adds local content to strengthen grip

Japanese-based mobile chat application LINE plans to strengthen its presence in the Indonesian market by encouraging and working with Indonesian creative designers to provide more local content for its app

Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, November 6, 2015

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LINE adds local content to strengthen grip

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apanese-based mobile chat application LINE plans to strengthen its presence in the Indonesian market by encouraging and working with Indonesian creative designers to provide more local content for its app.

LINE'€™s senior vice-president of its global business division EunJung Lee explained that by forging collaborative ties with Indonesia'€™s creative industry, the app would strengthen its base in Indonesia.

On Thursday, LINE launched the LINE Creative Day 2015 event in Jakarta where a number of Indonesian creative industry players competed to create LINE stickers or '€œWebToon'€ digital comics to be featured on the app, popular for its colorful '€œstickers'€ and WebToon comics.

'€œWe want to contribute to Indonesia by supporting creative talents that we feel would bring a benefit to the economy as a whole,'€ Lee said at the LINE Creative Day event on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Creative Economy Agency head Triawan Munaf added that there was a lack of local platforms showcasing creativity.

'€œCreators must also learn how to disseminate their art so that it can appeal to the international market too. There'€™s nothing wrong with making content that is only relevant to Indonesians, but in order for the creative economy to truly flourish, that must happen,'€ Triawan said.

Over 24,000 Indonesian designers and creators contributed over 135,000 stickers currently featured on the app. To put it in a larger context, up to 2.4 billion stickers are exchanged between LINE users each day.

'€œThe sales of Indonesian-made stickers cannot be determined by geography, because the pattern is not uniform. However, they remain on sale in the LINE International Sticker Store, available for all users globally to see,'€ Lee said.

One sector that LINE has not focused on completely in Indonesia, said Lee, was the mobile games market. LINE, the creator behind the PokoPang mobile game, admits that despite promising trends, the company was still formulating its strategy regarding games in Indonesia.

LINE recorded a total of 212 million monthly active users by the third quarter of 2015, with 65 percent of them from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. Line Corp'€™s third quarter earnings report for 2015 saw a 38 percent year-on-year increase in revenues to Â¥29.9 billion.

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