| LINE is a freeware app for instant communications on electronic devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, and personal computers. LINE users exchange texts, images, video and audio, and conduct free VoIP conversations and video conferences. In addition, LINE is a platform providing various services including digital wallet as LINE Pay, news stream as LINE Today, video on demand as LINE TV, and digital comic distribution as LINE Manga and LINE Webtoon.
LINE was originally developed as a mobile application for Android and iOS smartphones. The service has since expanded to BlackBerry OS (August 2012), Nokia Asha (Asia and Oceania, March 2013), Windows Phone (July 2013), Firefox OS (February 2014), iOS tablets (October 2014), and as a Chrome Browser Application (via the Chrome Web Store).
LINE began as a disaster response. In March 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami damaged Japan's telecommunications infrastructure nationwide, obliging employees at NHN Japan to rely on Internet-based resources to communicate. The company's engineers developed LINE to facilitate this, and the company released their app for public use in June 2011.
On July 3, 2012, NHN Japan announced the new LINE features Home and Timeline. The features allowed users to share recent personal developments to a community of contacts in real-time, similar to the status updates in social networking services such as Facebook.
On March 17, 2021, the Asahi Shim-bun reported that all image / video data of LINE users and LINE Pay transaction information are stored on a South Korean server. This information was authorized to be accessed by employees of LINE Plus, a Korean subsidiary of LINE. The current privacy policy is difficult for users to understand and the situation is not fully communicated, so LINE will review the description and transfer the data to Japan (specific date unknown)
In response to these reports, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced at a press conference that it would stop using the LINE service on March 19 and request each local government to investigate the usage status.
In March 2021, SoftBank Group affiliate Z Holdings completed a merger with Line Corporation. Under the new structure, A Holdings, a subsidiary of SoftBank Corporation, will own 65.3% of Z Holdings. In effect, Z Holdings will become a consolidated subsidiary of SoftBank Corporation and own LINE and Yahoo!Japan.
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