The main competitor of both LINE and WeChat is fellow Asian application KakaoTalk.
Indonesia is one of the Asian markets where KakaoTalk is most popular, having grown from around 500,000 users one year ago to 13 million as of today, according to KakaoTalk co-CEO Sirgoo Lee. Kakao had 110 million users worldwide as of October. As of now, however, the mobile messaging app has around 120 million, more than half (70 million) of which reside in the app’s home country of South Korea (which is a little baffling considering the population of South Korea stands at around 50 million).
KakaoTalk has seen some fierce competition from both WeChat and LINE, which are both far more popular outside Asia. WeChat has more than 400 million registered users worldwide as of August, while LINE surpassed 300 million users about a month ago. Most of KakaoTalk’s users reside within Asia, where it’s sitting comfortably with growing market share.
That’s of course, not mentioning heavy contenders like WhatsApp Messenger and BBM. As the messaging space continues to heat up, there’s bound to be some losers and winners, and it’s still too soon to tell which apps will come out on top and which apps will be put up on the acquisition block.