Japan 's Line Messaging App To Expand Taiwan Office

Japan's Line Corp., creator of the fast-growing social messaging app Line, said Tuesday that its Taiwan office will be expanded by five to 10 times next year to create more localized "stickers" and mobile content.

Kang Hyun-bin, head of Line Business Development Division, told CNA that the Taiwan branch now has recruited about 10 employees since its establishment in May and is planning to hire more local workers for marketing, sales, information technology and design.

He said Taiwan has become Line's third-largest market around the world with over 17 million registered users, behind only Japan with 49 million and Thailand with 20 million, driven by its popular oversized emoticons, or stickers.

Line has more than 7 billion daily messages and over 1 billion stickers sent by worldwide users, according to Kang, who declined to break down the figures for Taiwan.

"Given that we have a huge number of users in Taiwan, we are planning an expansion of our office here in order to improve the user experience and prepare for launching new services," Kang said.

Akira Morikawa, chief executive officer at Line, said in a statement a day earlier that he aims to have 500 million users by the end of 2014 and to develop Line into "the world's top communication service."