Line Thailand to develop single application platform next year
Line Thailand plans to capitalise on its five business areas next year to expand from an instant-messaging service into a digital life platform provider.
The company expects to be serving about 41.5 million Line users in the Kingdom by the end of next year.
After serving as the first country head for Google Thailand for four years, Ariya Banomyong last month became the first managing director of Line Thailand.
Ariya aims to develop a single-application platform that will connect Line’s five business areas. These are Line games, Line Pay, Line Content, Line Shop and Line@, which allows users to communicate and share information outside the social network.
He said he wanted to guide the company to follow the changes in consumer behaviour driven by smart devices. "As a result, we will be able to write a new chapter for Line," said the managing director.
He added that Line Thailand would develop an innovative business platform. This will be launched next year, and he said he could not disclose details about it.
He added that the Thai unit would be the first to announce Line TV officially to provide exclusive content to customers via their smart devices. The official launch will be tomorrow with the cooperation of more than six digital TV companies including GMM25, GTH, Woody World, NineEntertain and One channel.
Ariya said there were now 33 million Line users in Thailand, or 83 per cent of the 40 million mobile Internet users in the country. The company expects to maintain that proportion, 83 per cent, of the 50 million mobile Internet users in Thailand expected next year, or around 41.5 million Line users.
Thailand is now No 2 in terms of Line users in the region with 33 million, following Japan, which has 58 million. Indonesia ranks third with 30 million.
