LINE Provides Cheaper Version Of Official Account, LINE@ For 5,250 Yen Per Month / ITmedia

NHN Japan announced to launch LINE@ from early December, which allows businesses to communicate on LINE. Existing official account costs 2 million yen for initial cost and 1.5 million yen for monthly. LINE@ is a cheaper version of the service with 5,250 yen for both initial and monthly fee.

LINE@ allows businesses to send message, coupon, and sale information to users who adds the account for their friends. The difference with official account is 1) not displayed on official account list page in LINE, 2) not provided with consulting service regarding coupon issuing or others, 3) limitation of users up to 10,000.

According to the company, it has around 30 companies using the official accounts of mainly large corporations including makers, whole sellers, retailers, restaurants, and key TV stations. Lawson, a convenience store chain, has over 4 million subscribers and gets good result such as 100 thousands people come to their stores by issuing a coupon. ...

ITmedia 11/19/2012 [jp]

memo

• A number of users surpasses 75 million including 35 million in Japan. Along with the O2O service, LINE launched 5 titles of social games. The growth speed of user acquisition seems getting bit slower in Japan. LINE seriously starts monetization of the successful mobile app.