LINE, the popular messenger app made by NHN Japan, is now available for Blackberry OS, the company announced yesterday.
As almost nobody in Japan uses a Blackberry (I’d say the “man on the street” wouldn’t even know what the term Blackberry means), this version was created mainly with the South East Asian user base in mind.
What’s interesting is that LINE’s Blackberry version lacks the call function. It also comes without the newly introduced “Home” and “Timeline” features.
NHN Japan explains:
This version targets areas such as Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, where BlackBerry remains a popular choice of handset. NHN Japan believes that it is important to allow their LINE app to be used for various devices and network environments in order to make the app accessible to as many users as possible, thereby raising user numbers. This BlackBerry version will be released at first with LINE’s main messaging feature alone, where users can send one another text and photos as well as those well renowned stickers designed to increase the one-to-one chatting experience.
So in other words, NHN Japan is going directly after Blackberry’s BBM messenger service here.
More on this on The Next Web Asia. A few days ago Reuters also published an interesting story on NHN Japan’s expansion plans that’s well worth reading.
