Line, the South Korean messenger app that poses significant competition to forerunners such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Viber, and Vine, has announced that it is going to conduct the first sale of its stock to the public in New York City and Tokyo, for an amount of three billion dollars. The listing is being prepared, and it is about to come to pass before August this year.
Line, for those who have not heard of it, is a mobile messenger that offers similar services to most others in the android, apple, and Windows marketplace. It offers a free Line to Line calling service with the option of calling mobile phones at a price. Other than that, it also offers an IM base that is less popular and has file, photo, and video sharing features. The app is primarily popular in Asian countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore, although in the recent times, it has seen significant attention from Europe and the Americas as well. It is particularly popular because it offers both voice and video calling features, something that WhatsApp and the likes to not do.
The app is rated 4.3 out of five on Google Play Store and has seen a hundred million downloads, which is second only to the very best in the area, such as Facebook. It will be interesting to see the kind of interest Line stock gets from buyers in the NYC as it is, if anything, an excellent indication of flourish on part of the South Korean VoIP giant.