LINE (ライン)

In March 2011 the Tōhoku earthquake saturated Japan's phone network, and staff at Naver's local subsidiary, stranded away from their families, found that only data still got through. LINE shipped three months later, designed to reach loved ones when calls fail.

The app has become the country's social infrastructure: payments, news, games, taxi booking, and above all its stickers — a business model LINE invented and which brings in hundreds of millions a year. In Japan, Taiwan and Thailand it holds the place WhatsApp holds elsewhere, and its Korean origin remains largely unknown to its Japanese users.