There’s one metric that we’ve been questioning a lot more lately, and that is the number of “active” users a calling and messaging app has rather than the tired “registered” user count that exists only to bolster the app’s public image. Active users are those who actually use the application currently whereas registered users could include users who haven’t used the application in months (or in some cases, years).
LINE is “aiming for 500 million” regisered users this year
Messaging platform LINE has reported 330 million total registered users, as reported by CNET Japan. This is up by 30 million since November. It’s likely that only around 60 percent of these registered users are actually actively using the application, though Naver never provided active user counts.
“We’re aiming for 500 million [registered] users in 2014,” LINE CEO Akira Morikawa said.
Even despite the growing competition, LINE continues to be among the most popular, though it has a long way to go before catching behemoths such as WhatsApp Messenger and Skype.