From the left: Co-founder Kenji Kasahara and the current CEO Yusuke Asakura
Japanese internet company Mixi today announced its financial report for the previous quarter. But they also announced that their CEO, Yusuke Asakura, will step down, appointing Hiroki Morita, general manager of the game department as the new CEO, effective after the scheduled shareholder meeting on June 24th.
According to the company, the huge success of its gaming apps (like Monster Strike) have helped them return to profit, despite the prediction that the company might show a $10 million loss in the fiscal year ending this March. They appointed the new CEO as part of their shifting from a recovery phase to a “re-growth” stage.
Late last year we told you about Comico, a free online manga service available on the web, as well as on iOS and Android. At that time we mentioned that NHN PlayArt, the company behind the service, had set an initial goal of acquiring 300,000 users by the end of 2013. It appears that the company is well past that goal now, announcing earlier this week that Comico has surpassed 1 million downloads, requiring only about 100 days since its initial launch to do so [1]. In Japan, it is now the top free iOS ‘books’ app, and the sixth ranked Google Play ‘comics’ app. NHN PlayArt is a subsidiary of Naver Corporation, developing many of Line’s popular casual games including the recently released Disney Tsumu Tsumu, currently the top free app on both iOS and Android in Japan with over 4 million downloads in its first 14 days. So overall it has been a pretty good start to 2014 for the group, which is housed within Line Corporation headquarters in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. When Comico launched, there were 56 different comics available to read, free of charge. The service has since expanded to include 71 comics. And as of…
Late last year we told you about Comico, a free online manga service available on the web, as well as on iOS and Android. At that time we mentioned that NHN PlayArt, the company behind the service, had set an initial goal of acquiring 300,000 users by the end of 2013. It appears that the company is well past that goal now, announcing earlier this week that Comico has surpassed 1 million downloads, requiring only about 100 days since its initial launch to do so [1]. In Japan, it is now the top free iOS ‘books’ app, and the sixth ranked Google Play ‘comics’ app.
NHN PlayArt is a subsidiary of Naver Corporation, developing many of Line’s popular casual games including the recently released Disney Tsumu Tsumu, currently the top free app on both iOS and Android in Japan with over 4 million downloads in its first 14 days. So overall it has been a pretty good start to 2014 for the group, which is housed within Line Corporation headquarters in Tokyo’s Shibuya district.
When Comico launched, there were 56 different comics available to read, free of charge. The service has since expanded to include 71 comics. And as of this past December, it also allows amateur manga artists to submit comics for consideration, with prize money currently available as part of an contest. After February 17th, 30 works will be selected from these submissions, and then reader voting will take place to chose a winner.
As for the Comico app itself, it’s interesting to compare it to Japan’s other popular manga app these days, DeNA’s Manga Box. That app has seen over 2 million downloads the span of about a month after its December launch. For readers abroad, you’ll find no English interface or translations in Comico yet, so perhaps Manga Box, which has better titles available in my view, might be a better option.
In Comico, you can crop a section and share with friends
Comico does have some interesting features though, most notably the fact that its manga are in color (as opposed to black and white). There is also a pretty interesting crop-and-share feature, which will let you easily select a snap of your manga to share with friends on social networks or over email (see picture above).
It’s good to see more and more services offering mobile manga solutions. As we pointed out before, Line also has its own mobile manga app, Line Manga, which is doing quite well too. It is currently ranked fifth in the iOS ‘books’ category, and second in the Google Play ‘comics’ category.
Comico’s ranking on iOS since its October release (App Annie)
Japanese app monetization platform Metaps announced today that all the mobile apps using its monetization platform have achieved a cumulative total of 1 billion downloads worldwide. While the company doesn’t disclose how many apps or developers have adopted the platform to date, the number of downloads has risen in the past few months, especially after establishing partnerships with Line and Kakao to help app developers using those messaging platforms monetize better. These partnerships were particularly instrumental in the company’s rapid growth. Metaps’ monetization platform consists of three different solutions: DirectTap, a cost per click-based ad network; Exchange, a traffic exchange network for participating apps; and Metaps OfferWall, a reward ad platform. Since launching back in in 2011, the company has been focusing on providing solutions to developers in Asian markets like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Metaps launched a new office in Shanghai in late 2013 to intensify its marketing efforts in mainland China. To commemorate this milestone, the company is providing a time-limited special offer to new users. For mobile developers, if you are new to the platform but sign up and integrate the Metaps Offerwall SDK into your app, the revenue generated will be 1.5 times…
Japanese app monetization platform Metapsannounced today that all the mobile apps using its monetization platform have achieved a cumulative total of 1 billion downloads worldwide.
While the company doesn’t disclose how many apps or developers have adopted the platform to date, the number of downloads has risen in the past few months, especially after establishing partnerships with Line and Kakao to help app developers using those messaging platforms monetize better. These partnerships were particularly instrumental in the company’s rapid growth.
Metaps’ monetization platform consists of three different solutions: DirectTap, a cost per click-based ad network; Exchange, a traffic exchange network for participating apps; and Metaps OfferWall, a reward ad platform.
Since launching back in in 2011, the company has been focusing on providing solutions to developers in Asian markets like Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Metaps launched a new office in Shanghai in late 2013 to intensify its marketing efforts in mainland China.
To commemorate this milestone, the company is providing a time-limited special offer to new users. For mobile developers, if you are new to the platform but sign up and integrate the Metaps Offerwall SDK into your app, the revenue generated will be 1.5 times the normal amount. This offer is effective for new users who sign up before the end of this month, starting today.
A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23. As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that. Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes). There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning…
A few months back we wrote about New York-based Aviary, which at the time was making an effort to establish itself in Japan. And now this month, an upcoming event will be a big part of that effort, as Aviary’s recently announced hackathon, Photo Hack Day, is set to take place on the weekend of February 22/23.
As we have noted previously, Japan is perhaps the most enthusiastic mobile photography nation, and we have covered an incredible amount of great photo applications that have been produced here. It’s not unlikely that many more fun apps will be created at this Japan version of Photo Hack Day, so if you are a developer that would like to participate, you can check out the Photo Hack Day site for more information on how to do that.
Aviary’s previous Photo Hack Day took place at Facebook’s San Francisco headquarters, with over 300 developers and designers producing 63 mobile apps. The Japan event will take place at Mixi headquarters in Tokyo, with 300,000 yen as the first place award (about $3,000, out of $15,000 total in prizes).
There are a number of API sponsors on board, with API demos taking place on the morning of the 22nd before the actual hacking kicks off at 11:30am [1]. So if you’re a developer or designer who would like to get involved in what looks to be very interesting, and very focused hackathon, do drop over to the website for more information, or register here on Peatix.
Our readers may recall that Aviary recently launched the first international edition of its photo editor in Japan back in November. We briefly spoke with their CEO Tobais Peggs at that time, who gives a brief intro to his service in the video below.
I should also note that I’ve agreed to volunteer at the event as one of the judges in an effort to help out. So if you’re in attendance, do come say hello! ↩
With over 340 million registered users around the world, Line’s success as a mobile platform is difficult to ignore. Over 9.2 billion messages are sent daily, and thanks to games and stickers Line brought in 12.2 billion yen in the last quarter [1]. Line’s home market of Japan is an interesting one to examine, given that 50 million of its registered users are based there [2]. As far back as a year ago, we declared here that ‘Line is the Japanese Facebook’, a comparison referring primarily to its dominance rather than any similarity in features. But how does the social internet landscape look in Japan in 2014? Let’s take a look at a couple of recent surveys that shed some light on this. Japanese market research site Fast-Ask recently polled a group of 680 people (ranging from teenages to those in their 40s) and asked them a barrage of questions. The most interesting question perhaps was (roughly translated) “Out of Facebook, Twitter, and Line, which would present the most trouble if it were suddenly taken away from you?” Almost half of respondents (49.0%) chose Line as their most essential service, with the rest of the respondents split between Twitter, Facebook,…
Line characters, at Line HQ in Tokyo
With over 340 million registered users around the world, Line’s success as a mobile platform is difficult to ignore. Over 9.2 billion messages are sent daily, and thanks to games and stickers Line brought in 12.2 billion yen in the last quarter [1].
Line’s home market of Japan is an interesting one to examine, given that 50 million of its registered users are based there [2]. As far back as a year ago, we declared here that ‘Line is the Japanese Facebook’, a comparison referring primarily to its dominance rather than any similarity in features. But how does the social internet landscape look in Japan in 2014? Let’s take a look at a couple of recent surveys that shed some light on this.
Japanese market research site Fast-Ask recently polled a group of 680 people (ranging from teenages to those in their 40s) and asked them a barrage of questions. The most interesting question perhaps was (roughly translated) “Out of Facebook, Twitter, and Line, which would present the most trouble if it were suddenly taken away from you?” Almost half of respondents (49.0%) chose Line as their most essential service, with the rest of the respondents split between Twitter, Facebook, and “I don’t know.”
Similarly, when asked “Which service on average do you use most?”, 40.4% of respondents said it was Line, with Twitter and Facebook polling at 32.6% and 23.5% respectively.
One of the reasons that Line has done so well is that it has managed to attract female users as well as male. The cute characters have helped its popularity in Thailand and Taiwan especially, where the service has 22 million and 17 million registered users respectively. A number of other ‘kawaii’ Japanese apps , including CocoPPa and Snapeee have won some attention in those regions as well, where made-in-Japan cuteness appears to be popular.
Here in Japan, Line is especially popular with the ladies, as another recent survey of over 2000 young mothers showed (average age 31.4 years old). In this poll, participants were asked which internet service they use at least once a week. Overwhelmingly, 70.4% say they use line at that frequency, up more than 20% on the previous year’s survey (see chart below).
In comparison, both Facebook and Twitter were also more popular than previous years in this survey, but their growth was not nearly as sharp as Line’s over the past year. If Facebook gets its mobile act together, it could make some further progress in Japan. But I think that if anyone is going to dethrone Line in its home market, it would have to be a service born on mobile. And that isn’t Facebook [3].
See the original story in Japanese. Spicy Cinnamon (Cinnamon for short), the startup behind the photo sharing app Seconds, announced today that it has raised 150 million yen (approximately $1.47 million) from CyberAgent Ventures, TBS Innovation Partners [1], Incubate Fund, and Golden Gate Ventures. Coinciding with this funding, the company has launched a new iOS app today called PicChat. [2] An Android version will follow soon. Cinnamon was launched back in 2012, led by Miku Hirano who previously work with Naked Technology, which was acquired by Mixi in 2011. The company securing seed funding from CyberAgent Ventures and several angel investors. Our readers may recall that the company pitched its Seconds app at Startup Asia Jakarta last April. The app appears to be doing well with over 200,000 downloads across the Asia region, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, so I’m curious why they are moving on to a new app. I had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Miku Hirano to find out more. We’ve been looking at our Seconds users for almost an year since launch, and we’ve learned how they typically behave. We target women around the age of 25 in the South East…
Cinnamon was launched back in 2012, led by Miku Hirano who previously work with Naked Technology, which was acquired by Mixi in 2011. The company securing seed funding from CyberAgent Ventures and several angel investors. Our readers may recall that the company pitched its Seconds app at Startup Asia Jakarta last April.
The app appears to be doing well with over 200,000 downloads across the Asia region, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, so I’m curious why they are moving on to a new app. I had a chance to speak with the company’s co-founder and CEO Miku Hirano to find out more.
Cinnamon CEO Miku Hirano
We’ve been looking at our Seconds users for almost an year since launch, and we’ve learned how they typically behave. We target women around the age of 25 in the South East Asian region, and we found that they are using our app not for saving memories in photos, but rather for real-time communication. For them, they can’t be bothered to key in texts when uploading a photo, so our new app allows you to add a short audio clip with the app. That’s PicChat.
I thought the Seconds app was a completed product to share photos among intimate friends. But it seems that Cinnamon has been treating it as a test marketing process for the next step. Considering the Seconds app has acquired more than 200,000 users to date, we can expect the new app to have a more rapid user expansion since based on user feedback.
In this space, I think Vietnam and Korea saturated by Korean apps like Kakao Talk. So we expect to take over Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand with the new app. To help in user acquisition, we hired a number of students from top Asian universities as interns. We believe in their potential in terms of their viral marketing skills.
As we’ve learned from China’s ClassBox, which reached 1 million downloads its first month, a viral effect can happen in a student network. It could be interesting to see if Cinnamon can win the interest of the younger generation in this way.
Cinnamon will shut down the Seconds app in the future and shift all their resources to their PicChat app. We understand that they will keep focusing on user acquisition this year, and will start monetization by selling stickers and ads after 2015.
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
