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Naver goes global with messaging app

Seoul - The billionaire founder of web portal operator Naver, Lee Hae-jin, is stepping onto the world stage with Line, a messaging app developed by a subsidiary in Japan to overcome communications devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

He was successful in getting Google to leave South Korea - one of the few countries where the US search engine does not dominate.

Lee, will however, face a very different market to the one that welcomed Naver.com.

Instead of developing a local lead and fending off a global giant, Lee will have to take on established rivals in an international context.

Selling shares

Line has lured 470 million users with its simple design and elaborate emoticons, such as a cartoon happy-go-lucky rabbit. Its user base eclipses that of local peer Kakao's KakaoTalk and places Line nearer Tencent Holdings's WeChat and Facebook's WhatsApp.

To fund expansion and close the gap, bankers familiar with the matter said Naver was considering selling shares of Line in Tokyo, New York or both.

They said any initial public offering could value the subsidiary at up to $20bn.

Lee founded Naver.com in 1999 to rival the portal of Daum Communications and Korean-language versions of foreign entrants such as Yahoo!

Major push


Naver.com attracted clicks with features such as a user question-and-answer forum and a search engine that displays results from news, blogs and other categories on a single page.

The portal built up such a lead that its search engine makes up 75% of the search market, according to researcher KoreanClick. Google, meanwhile, which embarked on a major push in Korea in 2006, holds 2%.

That put South Korea in a handful of markets, including China and Russia, where Google is not the dominant force. It also left Naver,  the country's fifth-most valuable stock, with a capitalisation of about $26.76bn.



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