BANGKOK -- For the past year, Pattayawat Tuppiree and Chairode Srisermsin, a Thai couple who are emoji developers, have been creating animated stickers that can be used while chatting on mobile messenger LINE.

Their mobile stickers including TuaGom, depicting an unruly, but lovely, girl, have been highly popular among young Thai LINE subscribers, allowing the couple to amass enough money to buy a house in Bangkok.

The couple’s achievement is just one aspect of LINE’s popularity among the mobile users in Thailand, often dubbed as the land of smiles.

The mobile messenger LINE has around 33 million subscribers, or 85 percent of the entire smartphone users, standing at 40 million, in the Southeast Asian nation.

LINE Corp., the operator of the messenger and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Naver, said giving its Thai branch much leeway in selecting and running a new business was key to a successful foray into the local market.

“Different from U.S. firms like Google and Facebook, which try to apply unified standards to their local services, we have decided to localize our services, avoiding direct competition with the U.S. heavyweights,” said Shin Jung-ho, the chief global officer of LINE Corp.

The mobile messenger firm hires local employees and lets a local take the lead in most of the business operations in the nation -- a part of LINE Corp’s “cuturalization,” initiative to provide customized services that fit the local culture.

“Other global services in Thailand are centralized while we (LINE) are localized,” said Ariya Banomyong, the head of LINE’s Thai branch, citing difference in corporate culture between Google and Naver.

LINE’s Thai chief, a founding member of Google Thailand, helped the U.S. Internet giant to get settled in the Thai market from 2011 to 2015.

“I could not make changes in Google services when bringing them into the Thai market because Thailand is just one of many countries for the U.S. Internet giant, but I have much more authority in customization of LINE services for local users,” he said.

Its partners such as e-commerce firm Lazada and donut firm Dunkin’ Donuts have also been riding the popularity of the mobile messenger in Thailand, conducting joint marketing projects together with the messenger firm.

“Fast speed and simplicity of the messenger in deploying marketing strategies meet the needs of Dunkin’ Donuts, which has to reach out to as many customers as possible,” said marketing director Raweepan Prakobwanakit.

The donut company hands out coupons to its followers and holds promotional events on LINE, which the marketing director said are very effective in attracting customers’ attention.

The Thai branch of Japan-headquartered LINE has been speeding up its business expansion in the nation by rolling out a wide range of services.

They have launched streaming music and TV service, a mobile payment solution, and a game platform. It also incorporated an Uber-like car-hailing service on the mobile messenger,

The company has also been making efforts to increase its off-line territory by launching online-to-off-line services, such as delivery service LINE MAN.

Putting on a green and gray jacket and a helmet, delivery men deliver almost anything that users request via the app.

Web portal giant Naver has been struggling for a long time in the Korean mobile messenger sector, losing ground to its rival Kakao, which now rules the market with more than a 90-percent market share.

That is why Naver was quick in making a decision to foray into global markets, including Japan and Taiwan. Naver is planning to list its subsidiary on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as early as this year.

LINE ranked the second best brand in Thailand last year only after Facebook, according to a survey by YouGov, a market research agency. YouTube, Google and Apple’s iPhone followed LINE in that order.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)
Korea Herald correspondent