In some parts of the world like Thailand, Indonesia, and Japan, chat app LINE is extremely popular to the point where there are cafes set up in its name, and there are also stores which sells merchandise like soft toys, t-shirts, and so on, all of which feature a variety of characters from the stickers used in the app.
In case you’re not familiar with LINE or it stickers, basically stickers are like emojis, but used to convey more complex emotions. It also turns out that stickers on LINE have proven to be a moneymaker, at least according to the company who has revealed that they pull in a whopping $270 million a year from sticker sales alone.
Stickers can be purchased in the app and they are usually updated pretty often to reflect what’s popular in today’s culture. For example there could be stickers based on the hottest anime in Japan at the moment, or previously we’ve seen stickers capitalizing on the hottest K-Pop groups and performances like PSY and his “Gangnam Style” song, or movies like the Avengers and so on.
LINE also claims that its users are sending each other as many as 389 million stickers a day. These stickers are available either as free downloads, or they can be purchased using coins which are sold for real money and are usually priced between $1-2 for a pack.