Line has more new users than KakaoTalk for the 3rd straight week

The headquarters of Naver, the operator of Line messenger service, in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. (Yonhap)

New users for mobile messenger application Line in South Korea have surpassed that of KakaoTalk for the third straight week this month, another implication that KakaoTalk's once-overwhelming dominance in the market is diminishing.

According to the report by the mobile data analysis firm IGA Works, the Line application was newly installed 61,640 times across the country between May 20 and May 26, edging out 56,771 new installations of KakaoTalk to lead all messenger service for messenger, phone calls and video calls here.

Line, jointly operated by South Korea's most-used search engine Naver and LY Corporation, has overtaken KakaoTalk in the new installations category in three out of four weeks since April 22. While widely used in several Asian countries such as Japan, it has rarely edged out KakaoTalk in the South Korean market in terms of user categories.

The recent surge of Line hardly implies that KakaoTalk is about to relinquish its place as the most-used messenger app among South Koreans. Line's monthly active users hover around 2 billion globally, but its local MAU of 2.38 million as of April is dwarfed by KakaoTalk's 43.95 million in the same month.

The recent dispute between South Korea and Japan over Line appears to have boosted locals' interest in the home-grown messenger service. The Japanese government recently suggested reorganizing the shares of the LY Corporation, citing security issues such as a massive leak of user information last year.

The two governments have been discussing the details of the ongoing controversy, with Seoul’s diplomats stating that there should be "no unfair discriminatory treatment of South Korean companies" in Japan.

In addition to South Koreans' renewed interest in Line, there have also been repeated service disruptions with KakaoTalk recently.

For instance, a disruption of the KakaoTalk services happened on May 13. While the error only lasted six minutes, the number of new installations of Line surpassed KakaoTalk that day, 12,497 to 8,731.

By Yoon Min-sik(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)