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Clash of Clans is now Japan’s top free app, after Puzzle & Dragons collaboration goes live

Rick Martin 2013.06.25

Back on June 7th we wrote that Japan’s smash hit Puzzle & Dragons would be engaging in a collaborative promotion with Supercell’s Clash of Clans. The tie-up, which sees Clash of Clans characters like appear as special enemy monsters and playable cards, began yesterday with the new CoC dungeon going live in the game.

It didn’t take long for this partnership to yield fruit, as Clash of Clans became the top free iOS app in the Japan app store at about 7pm last night [1]. Check out the chart above to see it’s recent progress. In the top grossing ranks, CoC is currently ranked 21st overall.

I’ve collected a couple of CoC cards already in Puzzle & Dragons, and it’s going to be interesting to see if GungHo conducts similar promotions with Western gaming companies looking to break into the lucrative Japan mobile gaming market.

Of course, Puzzle & Dragons has dominated the Japanese market like no other game, recently surpassing 15 million downloads back on June 8th.

Update: Serkan Toto has more on this in a great post late last night.

Clash of Clans is now also a featured staff pic in the Japanese app store, and that has likely been a huge help for the app too. ↩

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Consumer rewards startup Kanmu partners with Credit Saison, raises $440,000 from investors

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.25

See the original story in Japanese. Some of our readers may recall that we featured Kanmu in our previous article about finance apps. It’s a Tokyo-based startup that provides card-linked offers (CLO), a new marketing/loyalty technique for brands and merchants. Kanmu announced on Monday that it would launch the first CLO service in Japan in partnership with Credit Saison, one of the country’s largest credit card issuers/acquirers. The startup has raised about 43 million yen (about $440,000) from East Ventures, Anri, and other Japanese investors. CLO has been implemented by major credit card companies in the US since early 2010. It connects offers or discounts directly to a consumer’s credit or debit card, which can then be redeemed at the point of sale. How does it work? Credit card holders receive online discount coupons on the dashboard showing your credit card balance. The type of virtual coupons you see will be decided according to what you have bought in the past, by drawing from your purchase history. If you’re interested in using one of these coupons, you simply need to click the banner. Subsequently, when you visit a retailer and use a credit card registered with the program, you will…

See the original story in Japanese.

Some of our readers may recall that we featured Kanmu in our previous article about finance apps. It’s a Tokyo-based startup that provides card-linked offers (CLO), a new marketing/loyalty technique for brands and merchants.

Kanmu announced on Monday that it would launch the first CLO service in Japan in partnership with Credit Saison, one of the country’s largest credit card issuers/acquirers. The startup has raised about 43 million yen (about $440,000) from East Ventures, Anri, and other Japanese investors.

CLO has been implemented by major credit card companies in the US since early 2010. It connects offers or discounts directly to a consumer’s credit or debit card, which can then be redeemed at the point of sale.

How does it work?

Credit card holders receive online discount coupons on the dashboard showing your credit card balance. The type of virtual coupons you see will be decided according to what you have bought in the past, by drawing from your purchase history. If you’re interested in using one of these coupons, you simply need to click the banner.

Subsequently, when you visit a retailer and use a credit card registered with the program, you will receive rewards automatically, such as cash-back. For users of partner company Credit Saison, you will be able to earn reward points via the CLO program.

For retailers, you can better target customers and need not worry about any elaborate setup to deploy the program. Retailers will be charged based on a performance-basis, so it’s much easier for them to begin using the program for as part of their marketing efforts.

But what about security? Kanmu’s CEO Wataru Yamaki addressed that point:

Our users’ personal information stays with credit card companies, which guarantees your information is as secure as it was before. We’re also currently working on getting certification for information security as well. […] What we do is managing which user has clicked on which coupon. So personal information never leaves the credit card company. Using this type of purchase analysis, card companies have been sending direct mail to their customers. But now it becoming web-based. For retailers and card companies, it lets you to see how aggressively consumers react to each promotional activity, as soon as that activity is deployed.

Yamaki is a young entrepreneur in his 20s, and has so far been involved in many projects using distributed services and natural language processing. Prior to the launch of the CLO service, he has been exploring financial information services and managing a market cap ranking site called MarketGeek. With these new funds, he hopes to acquire more sales and analysis personnel.

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Tokyo’s Giftee launches new service, lets you mail a gift without any address

SCORE 1,495

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Giftee is a service that allows you to send a gift voucher over the internet. For instance, when you receive such a voucher from someone, you could use it to redeem a complimentary cup of coffee at a partnering coffee shop, for example. For gift givers, the service gives you a great way to send a small token of thanks or appreciation to someone lives far away from you. However for the gift receiver, the process of redeeming the coupon is not always easy. But the startup has just taken a step to remedy this. Giftee announced the launch of a new service today which delivers your gift straight to your friend on your behalf. For gift givers, you can choose a present from among 60 products across 20 brands, such as Japanese teas, sweets, flower arrangements, and accessories. When you complete the purchase, you will receive a specific URL from the service. Subsequently, you can send that URL to the recipient over e-mail, by a Facebook private message, or via the Line messaging app. You never need to know the receiver’s mailing address because they will be prompted to enter it…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Giftee is a service that allows you to send a gift voucher over the internet. For instance, when you receive such a voucher from someone, you could use it to redeem a complimentary cup of coffee at a partnering coffee shop, for example. For gift givers, the service gives you a great way to send a small token of thanks or appreciation to someone lives far away from you.

However for the gift receiver, the process of redeeming the coupon is not always easy. But the startup has just taken a step to remedy this.

Giftee announced the launch of a new service today which delivers your gift straight to your friend on your behalf. For gift givers, you can choose a present from among 60 products across 20 brands, such as Japanese teas, sweets, flower arrangements, and accessories. When you complete the purchase, you will receive a specific URL from the service. Subsequently, you can send that URL to the recipient over e-mail, by a Facebook private message, or via the Line messaging app. You never need to know the receiver’s mailing address because they will be prompted to enter it after receiving the URL from you.

181b499d69fb98c8b886dbe3994b91be — For recipients, you can choose your preferred color or type.

For those receiving gifts, when you click the URL in a message from a sender, you’ll be requested to accept the gift and enter your own address. Using his dashboard, the sender can see if you have already read the notification e-mail.

605eee4d41ff3c05e9f15b195a0809a7 — For senders, you can choose a gift card and attach a message.

Giftee’s co-founder/CEO Mutsumi Ohta explained what prompted him to launch this new service.

I learned one of our partnered merchants was selling very cute cookies. But the confectionery shop is located [relatively] far from any railway stations, so the coupon redemption rate was pretty bad. But the startup has an e-commerce channel and can ship their products from online orders. This means they are capable of delivering their products upon getting gift order requests. We started testing it last fall, and learned many people have repeatedly used the new service.

Mr. Ota thinks the service’s original concept to deliver small ‘thank yous’ over social media has been well understood among its users since the initial launch back in 2011. The only problem with this new delivery service is that it’s bit expensive to ship. But the startup is now trying to overcome this using a reasonably priced mail delivery service.

If you have some products that might be suitable for such a gifts, the startup welcomes your application to be a partner merchant. But they are careful about partner selection selection and there are a range of reasons why a product might not make the cut.

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Japanese homescreen decoration app CocoPPa reaches 10M downloads, most from overseas

Junya Mori 2013.06.24

See the original story in Japanese. United, the startup behind popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced that the application has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The app was first launched just about 11 months ago. CocoPPa allows you to change your homescreen using icons or wallpapers posted by other users on the platform. It’s used in more than 150 countries worldwide, and a 87% of all the downloads have come from outside Japan. In addition to providing homescreen designs, the app lets you exchange messages with other users, and they often use Google Translate to enjoy chatting regardless of language gaps. The iOS version of CocoPPa was launched back in July of 2012, and its user growth was relatively slow for the rest of that year. But growth has been much stronger since this past February, and user numbers have tripled over a span of three months. And in May, the total number of the downloads surpassed 8 million. When we previously heard from the startup, they expressed the hope of reaching 30 million downloads by the end of this year. That’s a lofty goal, but 10 million is certainly a good first step! Some of our readers may recall that…

See the original story in Japanese.

United, the startup behind popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced that the application has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The app was first launched just about 11 months ago.

CocoPPa allows you to change your homescreen using icons or wallpapers posted by other users on the platform. It’s used in more than 150 countries worldwide, and a 87% of all the downloads have come from outside Japan. In addition to providing homescreen designs, the app lets you exchange messages with other users, and they often use Google Translate to enjoy chatting regardless of language gaps.

The iOS version of CocoPPa was launched back in July of 2012, and its user growth was relatively slow for the rest of that year. But growth has been much stronger since this past February, and user numbers have tripled over a span of three months. And in May, the total number of the downloads surpassed 8 million.

When we previously heard from the startup, they expressed the hope of reaching 30 million downloads by the end of this year. That’s a lofty goal, but 10 million is certainly a good first step!

Some of our readers may recall that the startup also partnered with Tokyo Otaku Mode last week. United also recently started hiring in an effort to accelerate its business expansion to the global market.

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Hello Kitty for your Smartphone: 5 Cute Apps to Try

SCORE 3,009

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.06.24

Hello Kitty Run! Run! Run! Perhaps the most popular of Japan’s many cute characters is Hello Kitty from Sanrio. This tiny cat absolutely everywhere, even on our mobile phones. Over on App Annie, searching ‘Hello Kitty’ brings up an astonishing 328 results. Here are just five of the apps we think you should consider downloading first. 1. Hello Kitty Mail ¶ One of the reasons that so many Japanese girls hesitated to switch to smartphones from feature phones was that it would be more difficult to send texts with cute emojis. Girls all have their favorite emoticons, and switching means that they would have to abandon them. But this Hello Kitty Mail app lets users send emails with cute Hello Kitty emojis, as well as Little Twin Sisters and My Melody. Additional emoji can be purchased within the app. If you’d like to download it, you can get it over on the app store for 170 yen (about $1.99). 2. Hello Kitty World ¶ Japanese web portal company Nifty released its iOS app in cooperation with Sanrio Wave back in April of 2012. And within just a year, the app has expanded to over 52 countries, with more than one…

Hello Kitty Run! Run! Run!

Perhaps the most popular of Japan’s many cute characters is Hello Kitty from Sanrio. This tiny cat absolutely everywhere, even on our mobile phones. Over on App Annie, searching ‘Hello Kitty’ brings up an astonishing 328 results. Here are just five of the apps we think you should consider downloading first.

1. Hello Kitty Mail ¶

One of the reasons that so many Japanese girls hesitated to switch to smartphones from feature phones was that it would be more difficult to send texts with cute emojis. Girls all have their favorite emoticons, and switching means that they would have to abandon them. But this Hello Kitty Mail app lets users send emails with cute Hello Kitty emojis, as well as Little Twin Sisters and My Melody. Additional emoji can be purchased within the app. If you’d like to download it, you can get it over on the app store for 170 yen (about $1.99).

2. Hello Kitty World ¶

Japanese web portal company Nifty released its iOS app in cooperation with Sanrio Wave back in April of 2012. And within just a year, the app has expanded to over 52 countries, with more than one million total downloads as of February 2013. With this app, users can create their own playland using different Sanrio characters. The social feature allows players to compete with each other through Twitter and Facebook too. The app has an English website which you can check out here.

3. Hello Kitty Run! Run! Run! ¶

Hello Kitty Run! Run! Run! is an app developed by the giant gaming company NamcoBandai, released back in May for both iOS and Android. In the game, an 8-bit Hello Kitty goes on adventures around the world turning herself into soldiers and witches. There are over 200 costumes for Hello Kitty to gear up in and over 50 stages to beat. The game is very simple and can be controlled by two buttons on the sides of the screen, making it suitable even for kids.

Check out Hello Kitty Run! Run! Run! in action below.

4. Hello Kitty Stamp Calendar ¶

This is a simple calendar app developed by Sanrio Wave featuring original Hello Kitty stamps. The app comes with an original Hello Kitty calendar theme that changes every week. By turning on the app once a day you can see Omikuji, a sort of a fortune-telling or horoscope. The calendar is good for three months, so in order to continue using the app it will be necessary to purchase an additional three months for 115 yen.

Hello Kitty Stamp Calendar is available on iOS for 350 yen (or $3.99).

5. Hello Kitty Face ¶

This one is for true Hello Kitty fans. ‘Hello Kitty Face’ is designed to work with a special iPhone case created by Gourmandise.

The outer case works as Hello Kitty’s body and the app displays her face on your mobile sceen. The iPhone case is available on Amazon Japan for 2,990 yen (or about $31) ¹.

To see the official Hello Kitty apps by Sanrio, you can check out Sanrio’s website.

On a related note, this may be the cutest Hello Kitty iPhone case ever.↩

Clash of Clans is now Japan’s top free app, after Puzzle & Dragons collaboration goes live

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