By Yoon Sung-won
LINE, a Japan-based mobile messenger service affiliate of Korea’s top portal Naver, said Monday it has launched its digital cartoon and Web novel service LINE Manga in Taiwan.
Starting with the Taiwanese market, the company pledged to expand its online and mobile content service to wider markets, tapping into the popularity of the LINE messenger service in the Asian region.
LINE Manga was rolled out in the Japanese market in April 2013 as a digital cartoon service that provides the country’s comics and Web novels. Customers can easily purchase the content and read them using the service, the company said.
“Since the launch in Japan, the LINE Manga application has recorded more than 11 million downloads, becoming the leading digital cartoon service in the country,” the company said. “As of now, Japan’s LINE Manga service is providing more than 100,000 cartoon and Web novels by over 100 publishers there.”
Launched in 2011, LINE has attracted over 600 million subscribers and has about 211 million monthly active users in global markets such as Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Spain, Mexico and the United States.
Based on the success in the Japanese market, LINE has established partnerships with leading publishers in the country including Kodansha, Shogakukan and digital book distributor Media Do. Together, they have launched LINE Book Distribution to jointly prepare for the cartoon-based global digital content business.
In Taiwan, which is the first global target for LINE Manga, the company will provide popular comics series such as “Attack on Titan,” “Space Brothers” and “Case Closed” for free on a daily publication basis. The service will also include 60 original comics based on LINE characters, which is exclusive content of LINE Manga, the company said.
LINE also said it will provide Taiwan’s local cartoon content under partnership with the nation’s top publishers such as Tongli Publishing, JaBook and Ching-win and vowed to expand partnerships with more diverse publishing firms to provide more cartoons and Web novels.