The Line messaging application has announced in a press conference in Tokyo, Japan that it now has more than 300 million users around the world. According to the company, it acquired over a 100 million users in a matter of merely four months.
As TechCrunch whose Japanese branch attended the press conference reports that Line believes has accelerated exponentially considering that while it took 19 months for the app to acquire the first 100 million subscribers, the next set of 100 million users came in the 6 months after that. And finally to progress from 200 million to 300 million the instant messenger required merely 4 months.
Now that it has 300 million users, the company’s next goal is to get 500 million people on Line in 2014. But what needs to be noted that these are merely customers who have downloaded the application once and may or may not utilize it. Also, Line counts same users again and again if they operate their account from different smartphones.
And that’s not quite all. Users who download the app and delete it after trying it out have also been included in the figures. So technically, the application does not have the number of subscribers that it clams it does. Line had revealed a while ago that its MAUs in Japan are 80 percent of subscribers in the country.
Line’s direct competitors are WhatsApp and WeChat amongst many others and it is trying to get a strong hold in a few countries that include India. The developers have also roped in Katrina Kaif as the brand ambassador to attract more subscribers.