Line and KakaoTalk's next battleground: mobile electricity Dealers

Absrtact: Communication applications Line and KakaoTalk have spent a year changing the pattern of the mobile gaming industry. The next battleground, they aim at mobile power, a more uncharted territory than the gaming industry. This fall, line will launch a power platform for the Japanese market

Communication applications line and KakaoTalk have spent a year changing the pattern of the mobile gaming industry. The next battleground, they aim at mobile power, a more uncharted territory than the gaming industry.

This fall, line will launch a line Mall for the Japanese market. One feature that has been disclosed by the authorities is that anyone can be a buyer or seller at any time or place.

Why does line aim at the electricity business? Line executive Director Tian Chun at last week's annual company meeting explained that line is a platform for users to communicate, and the sale of E-commerce itself is a communication.

Looking back at the current revenue structure of line application platform, game revenue accounted for 53%, pay expression income accounted for 27%, and corporate sponsorship class income reached 20%. One month of the game's income has reached 32 million U.S. dollars, pay the expression of the monthly income of about 10 million dollars. When the game and expression pattern has matured, line begins to try to adjust the ratio of income structure, that is, to increase the revenue from the business of the electricity dealer.

Different from line previously through the official account, line@ marketing account and other O2O mode of business model, line mall will become a combination of both the business and Consumer-to-consumer E-commerce platform.

Although the official did not elaborate on the business model, but Japan's Toyo Economic news website speculated that line mall will be the same as the Japanese electric platform Lotte and Amazon, by charging the store fees to be used as a profit model. From an official standpoint, the platform will be more focused on the small shop where individual users are running.

According to foreign media analysis, line currently has 47 million users in Japan, covering 90% of smartphone users. With this user-scale advantage, line mall E-commerce platform may pose a threat to Rakuten and Amazon.

The mobile business battlefield of Line: the future of the unknown

As a social platform that has grown from mobile terminals, the mobile business that line is challenging is full of uncertainties.

Looking back at the current mobile electric business industry, the main mode is divided into the mobile end of the traditional electronic business platform, mobile end shopping guide applications and some market segments of mobile electric business platform. But the real representative, has been successful in the mobile electrical products are rarely case. Now, line wants to recreate a new electric quotient platform from the mobile end, if its model can succeed, whether from the mobile electricity quotient or the level of social electric quotient, will give this market point new possibility.

Previously, line has begun to use the official account to sell some goods. Since last September, line has started a limited-time snapping of online activities for Japanese female users, such as the sale of limited handbags with Samantha Thavasa, according to the Taiwanese media Secret. A total of 500 bids of 8400 yen and an expressive handbag are sold out in the first few minutes of the event.

Combining Line's current product features, line's upcoming mobile business may also make full use of the following advantages:

1. Active user base. As a social application based on chatting, line's high user activity rate is a differentiator from other products. Even the user dynamic information sharing page of the monthly active users can reach 73 million. The growth of sharing and interactivity has the advantage of driving mobile shopping, with innate flow.

However, social shopping is a good choice for the same type of applause, there is analysis that line may be able to grasp the characteristics of the chat products, such as the group chat between friends for shopping will form the impact of decision-making.

2. Using line emoticons and surrounding products to drive shopping. In line to promote the O2O business, its use of emoticons and surrounding dolls as gifts to drive offline merchandise sales is considered to be an important way of marketing. Now you can copy this pattern back to the line. Line executives also disclosed that users in line mall shopping behavior can be converted into points, to buy chat expressions, themes or virtual items.

3. Provide content display for mobile end. If you're simply moving the PC-side shopping experience back to the mobile end, this is not a good way to move. But in the case of some of the sales of goods, but some of the distinctive characteristics of the sales approach has been favored.

Last month, AHAlife, a website dedicated to doing luxury goods, bought a photo-sharing application Kaptur, talking about the attempt behind the takeover, the founder of the company's website, introducing the viral marketing of image applications to expand the visibility and impact of the product.

For electrical products, they need to explore a better way to display and promote, in this business model is still in exploration, line will provide the business of how the display and sales platform will be to a large extent determine the purchase of activity.

Grasp the mobile end of E-commerce opportunities are the direction of many enterprises peep, but the reality proved that the exploration of the merchants have not really think clearly how to do to subvert the past in the PC-shaped electrical business model.

Even in the domestic High-profile micro-credit mobile electric business, the model has been clearly focused on micro-shopping O2O mode and micro-life brand service model.

For line companies that do not have the basis for their business, they are no longer the game, cartoon design or content portals they are good at. In the new uncharted territory, the front is full of temptations and risks.