NEXT IN LINE
Having come to Thailand less than three years ago, the messaging app has changed the way Thais communicate. But if you ask the man at the helm of the Asian internet company’s Thai operations, he’ll tell you that the mobile platform is just getting started
We can’t and won’t stop innovating. We have to drive the next phase of the messaging app evolution. ARIYA BANOMYONG MANAGING DIRECTOR OF LINE THAILAND
Nearly half of Thailand’s population is using Line, the most popular free instant messaging and chat app in the country. And Thailand is Line’s second-largest market in the world after Japan, where the chat platform was created.
In less than three years since its arrival here, Line has become Thailand’s hottest phenomenon by offering an app that provides free web-based texting and call features.
Unsurprisingly, Line is the leader among chat apps in Thailand with 33 million active users, representing more than 80% of smartphone users in the country, thanks to its simplicity and significant cost savings for users relative to SMS and international calls, which are the key drivers of its growth, says Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Thailand.
Most important, the animated Line characters, called stickers, that the app offers for use when texting have proved a hit with consumers, as they express emotions that would be difficult to sum up in a text.
This is further helped by SMS losing its way as consumers adopt smartphones en masse and hop onto the chat app bandwagon.
Services like Line TV and Facebook Live also pose a serious threat to broadcast television as the bulk of online spending by brands on digital ads moves to chat apps and social media.
Last but not least, the battle taking place on the online video and live broadcasting platforms between chat apps and social media for online display ads is intensifying, leading to innovative bursts for the journalism business model.
While it’s impossible to predict the future trajectory of Line, key questions remain.
Can Line maintain its momentum and spread its influence among tech-savvy users in Thailand? Will it continue to grab smartphone users, or will growth eventually slow down?
“Even though our messaging app has experienced tremendous success in Thailand, moving beyond chat is the future,” Mr Ariya says. “Line is actually a mobile platform incorporating chat as just one of its features. We have to eventually move beyond communications.
“As a piece of technology, we can’t and won’t stop innovating,” says Mr Ariya, who took charge of Line Thailand’s operations in October 2015. “We have to drive the next phase of the messaging app evolution. We compete with ourselves. We have to bet on our own future.”
Three years after being founded as a pure chat business in Thailand, Line still has a ways to go to further dominate the Thai market, he says.
“Line needs to innovate creative services that match consumer needs in order to build its user base and monetise other services to cater to the ever-evolving needs of modern modes of living and young consumers in order to create new, sustainable revenue streams,” Mr Ariya says.
PERFORMING AS A MONEYMAKER
Line is trying to become a new kind of company, “a smart portal”, connecting all service platforms.
According to a Nielsen survey, Thais spend an average of four hours a day using their smartphones, and onethird of that time is spent on Line, Mr Ariya says.
“With the country’s largest free app customer base, we’re turning users into an audience for brand messages and becoming a platform for games and digital goods,” he says.
Line is therefore looking for ways to persuade more users to stick with the Line platform as a single-source solution for end-to-end platforms.
The company launched Line TV in Thailand in 2015, available on iOS, Android or via the web. Line TV, which is currently free to use, features a host of popular TV shows and music videos from Thailand, Korea and Japan.
With the Line TV service integrated into the Line messaging app, users are able to share video content easily with their friends and follow the official accounts of the actors and TV shows that feature on Line TV.
Line last year also introduced Line Today, a news headlines and topics app, and Line Man, a food, grocery and quick delivery app, in Thailand.
Mr Ariya says the three new services, a year-long effort to build up Line’s business offerings, are now up and running.
“Once we achieve scale, they will start to become meaningful businesses and bolster our revenue,” he says.
But despite the overall success of the global messenger, he admits that not every service offering has gone down as a success.
Take Line Music. The online streaming music app was shut down less than a year after being launched, due to lack of interest.
“We accept our failures and can learn from our mistakes to get better,” Mr Ariya says.
Asked how he would rate Line’s success on a scale of one to 10, he says he’d give six out of 10 points for Line’s performance under his direction.
AWORLDWITHOUT APPS
Mr Ariya believes that the world of mobile applications will soon render obsolete the traditional method of installing apps on devices.
With limited phone memory, people have to frequently remove unwanted or unnecessary app icons from their home screens to recover storage space on their phones. Uninstalling and reinstalling so many apps is a huge waste of time.
“I strongly believe that smartphone users will soon be able to use apps widely from a link without having to download anything from app stores,” Mr Ariya says. “That’s an upcoming trend in the world of mobile apps, one in which downloading becomes obsolete. Line aims to become a single-purpose portal providing various digital services where users don’t have to download apps.”
There are more than 200 million apps available on Google Play and Google Store.
Mr Ariya says app downloads have probably been one of the most exciting and popular areas for smartphone users over the past five years.
But today, smartphone users don’t want to have too many app icons on their screens. Instead, they are trying to get rid of unnecessary apps to clean up their smartphones.
The idea of having a screen full of icons, representing independent apps that need to be opened to experience them, is making less and less sense. The idea that these apps sit in the background, pushing content into a central experience, is making more and more sense, Mr Ariya says.
That central experience may be something that looks like a notification centre today, or something similar to Google Now, or perhaps something entirely new.
In a world of many different screens and devices, content needs to be broken down into atomic units so that it can work without regard to screen size or the technology platform.
“A bank of app icons as a dominant design pattern feels old and inefficient now, and I think it’ll disappear within a couple of years,” Mr Ariya says.
To survive, he says, content makers no longer need to make their own apps. They can develop services and use social communication platforms like Line to help them distribute their commercial content.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
Mr Ariya believes chat apps will continue to hit new user-base milestones as more of the world adopts smartphones.
“We are riding the growing popularity of iOS and Android smartphones,” he says. “We will serve as an all-encompassing ecosystem covering payments, games, broadcasts and communications.”
He says disruptive technologies like internet-based streaming services are increasingly making a mark and challenging traditional business models for banking, retailing, broadcasting, e-commerce and print media.
“I strongly believe that all TV operators have learned the truth that the future of broadcast TV will have to be on online platforms. They need to shape the future of broadcasting to overcome the challenges presented by consumer migration, as people continue to demand change across the whole of their viewing experience — from the content they watch to the devices they use to watch it on and the methods they choose to pay for it.”
Traditional, scheduled TV watching is no longer the norm. Consumers are watching more content on mobile screens than ever before. The shift is partly because viewers prefer individually tailored content experiences, but also because of the increase in quality content available that has been specifically tailored for those screens.
Line, through its Line TV app, is focusing more and more on mobile-first video options.
“Adding to our existing 140-strong staff [in Thailand], Line is increasing the number of creators and innovators to develop exciting services to match the trends in consumer behaviour online,” Mr Ariya says.
2017: LINE’S GOLDENYEAR
Since coming into existence in 2016, Line TV and Line Today have caught a wave of momentum and will be key growth engines this year.
“These two services will be our future,” Mr Ariya says. “With our advantages over our rivals in terms of having a large user base, which is the most-valued asset fundamental to doing business, Line will continue creating new businesses through its own inventions and collaborating with prospective business partners.”
He says that while more and more consumers have moved towards online purchases, companies are not moving fast enough to online or digital channels.
Only 10% of the more than 3 million businesses in Thailand are operating online.
Line is encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises, which account for the largest group of businesses and the backbone of the country’s economy, to move online to expand their businesses overseas.
“2017 will be a golden year for Line,” Mr Ariya says. “Given our kind of [technology] business, we need to double our business every year to survive.”
Even though the well-established social networks like Facebook are a constant threat, Mr Ariya champions Line as an open platform acting as a true social network operator.
“Line has great opportunities to become a disruptive platform challenging others,” he says. “We aim for everything to be equipped in Line by 2018.”