Beyond mobile messenger, Line seeks rebirth as Asia’s prime consumer platform: CTO
Beyond mobile messenger, Line seeks rebirth as Asia’s prime consumer platform: CTO https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/beyond-mobile-messenger-line-seeks-rebirth-as-asias-prime-consumer-platform-cto.jpeg 810 438 C-Suite Network https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/beyond-mobile-messenger-line-seeks-rebirth-as-asias-prime-consumer-platform-cto.jpeg
SEOUL – Line Corporation tasted huge success as it dominated major Asian countries’ mobile messaging service, and now Line hopes to grow into a consumer platform with wider roles, according to its CTO and Senior Vice President Park Eui-vin.
Six years ago, Line Corp. successfully edged out western rivals like Facebook and WeChat to rise as the dominant mobile messaging service chosen by major Asian markets including Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia.
And now, the Tokyo-based mobile messaging app operator is on track to achieve its broader vision of expanding into a full-fledged consumer platform by leveraging its strengths in localization and data-driven artificial intelligence technology.
Line, touted as a rare case of a globalized business brought to success by South Korea’s internet technology giant Naver, currently has more than 200 million monthly active users worldwide, concentrated mostly in its four core countries in Asia.
Having hit the growth ceiling as a mobile messenger, it is now hoping to grow into a consumer platform with wider roles — a shift that will be underpinned by AI and big data, according to Line’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President Park Eui-vin.
“We want to expand our platform to become a ‘smart portal’ for not just mobile messaging but things like simplified payment and content access, with aims to better link users to their daily endeavors,” Park said in an interview with The Korea Herald at Line’s Seoul office.
“The key will be to join hands with more third-party companies to make existing services from Line as well as others more convenient as possible for users, for which AI technology and data will play an integral role,” said Park, who has been leading Line’s development team as CTO from April 2014.
As part of the push, Line unveiled its artificially intelligent voice assistant platform Clova in March this year. Similar to Amazon’s Alexa and Google’ Assistant, Line’s AI assistant platform combines speech recognition and natural language processing abilities with data processing capabilities to automatically respond to…
