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Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won. (Naver Cloud) |
Line Works, South Korean internet giant Naver Corp.’s enterprise collaboration tool, is gaining a strong foothold in Japan by securing nearly 600,000 corporate clients and generating annual revenue of 150 billion won ($109.3 million) in just 10 years since its launch in 2016.
“Line Works has maintained the top market share in the Japanese business chat market for seven consecutive years,” Naver Cloud Chief Executive Officer Kim Yu-won said. “As a B2B software, it will be the largest in terms of export scale from Korea.”
Kim’s comments during a press conference held in Osaka, Japan, to celebrate Line Works’ 10thanniversary.
Line Works is an all-in-one mobile service for enterprises that Naver introduced to the Japanese market in 2016. It allows users to handle key tasks such as messaging, e-mail, scheduling, and video conferencing, all from mobile devices, anywhere and anytime.
According to market research firm Fuji Chimera Research Institute, Line Works has held the top spot in the paid business messaging market for seven years since 2017. Its annual revenue has grown by about 40 percent each year, and its annual recurring revenue surpassed 16 billion yen ($109.4 million) by July of 2025.
Line Works has 590,000 global clients and 5.8 million users as of January 2025, with this success in Japan attributable to Naver Founder Lee Hae-jin’s decisive move.
Naver expanded its internal mail service, Naver Works, into a B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) product in 2013. To do this, it created a separate entity called Works Mobile, now Line Works Corp. While Works Mobile initially focused on the domestic market, Lee, who was aiming for global expansion, advised that the company should not limit itself to Korea and should “compete globally.”
This led to the decision to target Japan as the first market but rather than simply transplanting the Korean service, Line Works pursued a strategy tailored to the Japanese market.
In Japan, there is a strong tendency not to share personal phone numbers for work, and there is a higher demand for mobile-based communication in the field rather than office-based communication. Line Works capitalized on this by offering an all-in-one service based on mobile messaging.
Line Works has also recently been accelerating its transition into an AI-powered work platform. It launched Line Works AI Note, a Japan-specific version of Clova Note, in November 2024 and introduced Line Works Roger, a service that converts voice messages into text, similar to a walkie-talkie, in February 2025.
AI-driven cloud cameras and image recognition-based document processing functions are also helping improve field automation and efficiency.
Naver Cloud is expanding AI technology in Japan’s welfare sector, including providing the Clova Care Call service which uses AI to check an elderly people, to local Japanese governments.
Lee has continuously knocked on Japan’s door since the early days of Naver’s founding in 2000 when he founded Naver Japan, believing that staying only in Korea would limit Naver’s growth. Japan served as the launchpad for Naver’s dream of becoming a global IT company.
Following a massive earthquake in Japan in 2011, the mobile messenger Line emerged as a popular communication tool and grew into a leading messenger in Japan. Naver’s webtoon platform, Line Manga, also gained attention by generating over 800 billion won in revenue from Japan alone in 2024.
Naver’s total revenue from Japan in 2024 amounted to 899.2 billion won, accounting for 8.4 percent of Naver’s global revenue. This is a sevenfold increase compared to 126.4 billion won in 2020.
According to market research firm IDC, the Japanese AI market is projected to grow at an annual rate of about 30 percent to total 2.5 trillion yen by 2028.
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