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LINE REVENUE SOARS: Popular Japanese messaging app LINE has become a massive business. For the full year 2013, LINE brought in $338 million in revenue. The bulk of this revenue came in the fourth quarter, where LINE raked in about $120 million for year-over-year growth of about 450% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012. LINE is now also reporting that they've grown to 340 million registered users after surpassing 300 million in November and after LINE revealed to us that they had reached 330 million users a few weeks ago.
Remember, LINE is a free app and the bulk of its revenue comes from in-app purchases. Game purchases made up about 60% of revenue with sticker sales making up another 20%. LINE also heavily touts its paid accounts revenue stream, whereby brands and companies pay for access to an official account on the LINE platform. Paid accounts, along with sponsored sticker sales, make up the remaining 20% of revenue. Though it may not be as large as WhatsApp or WeChat in terms of active users, LINE has become the model for mobile messaging apps transforming from simply communication services to full-blown media and marketing distribution platforms. (The Next Web)
MOBILE VIDEO ADS: A mobile video startup called Vungle has raised a $17 million Series B funding round just six months after its $6 million Series A round. Vungle specializes in 15-second, in-app video ads and told TechCrunch that they are in the midst of building the first ever in-app video ad exchange, with hopes that brand advertisers will repurpose TV and desktop video content for mobile. Video continues to move forward as the next high-growth mobile ad category. (TechCrunch)
PINTEREST REVAMPS MOBILE: Pinterest has seen a surge in traffic from mobile apps, with their native apps now generating about 75% of Pinterest's daily traffic. To build on this trend, Pinterest is revamping its mobile website so that the experience is on par with its mobile apps and desktop website. Pinterest understands the importance of maintaining a killer mobile website as a complement to its massive app usage growth. (TechCrunch)
QUOTE OF THE DAY - "There's nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market. We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time." - Steve Wozniack, Apple co-founder, on why Apple should make an Android phone. Click on the link to the right to read BusinessWeek's take on why Woz is wrong. (BusinessWeek)
LINKEDIN BUYS BRIGHT: As announcing earnings yesterday, LinkedIn also revealed its acquisition of Bright.com, a data-driven website for job seekers. The move eliminates a potential competitor, but LinkedIn is also looking to bring on Bright's engineers and product team and make use of Bright's algorithmic data-driven approach to job matching. LinkedIn's "talent solutions" product, a cache of back-end tools to help recruiters narrow candidate pools down, now makes up 55% of its revenue. With Bright, LinkedIn is clearly doubling down on what is now its cash-cow. (Recode, Quartz)
Flappy Birds, a simple yet incredibly frustrating and nearly impossible mobile game, is pulling in $50,000 in revenue per day. (Forbes)
Sony smartphones: The troubled consumer electronics giant only shipped 10.7 million smartphones last quarter. (GSMArena)
Chinese smartphone shipments will decline slightly in sequential terms in the first quarter of 2014. Digitimes says Chinese smartphone shipments totaled 314 million in all of 2013, for 62% annual growth. (Digitimes Research)
Google Play adds support for 25 local currencies, include the currencies of Australia and Saudi Arabia, which means developers can now price download and in-app purchases in local currency. (Android Police)
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