With 10M downloads, Japan’s Papelook app knows how to get the girls

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It has been a while since we looked in on the Japanese photo collage app Papelook. So recently when the company made an announcement that its app would be preinstalled on Aquos Pad tablets (at the suggestion of KDDI) we thought we’d get back in touch to see how they’re doing.

Interestingly, we found that the Japanese telco au/KDDI has featured Papelook heavily as a selling point on the tablet’s product page and in their promotional video (about 18 seconds in). As we have pointed out before, the app’s popularity among Japanese girls and young women cannot be understated.

And while girls here in Japan especially love this collage app, the Android version of Papelook is doing fairly well in a number of Asian regions too. In fact, the company claims that their app has been downloaded more than 10 million times in total as of this past January. That puts it in the same category as Cocoppa, which has leveraged Japan’s unique ‘kawaii’ style to become a sort of international hit among women.

In Japan mobile companies really make an extra effort to go after specific demographics when selling mobile products (for example, girls, seniors, young kids), so it’s interesting to see that an app like Papelook can ride such specialization to achieve this pre-installed status. In fact, Japan has an abundance of cute mobile apps that could be used in this way.

A representative from Papelook tells me that they will try to go after the young mothers demographic this year, although I understand that they are working on some other photo apps as well.

If you’d like a video overview of how Papelook works, you can check that out here. The crop/clip tool has been greatly improved, and other adjustments have been made since that last video, so I encourage you to give it a try and experience the app for yourself.

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