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Asia has an appetite for Line’s Cookie Run

Rick Martin 2014.04.07

Line’s ‘Cookie Run’ game (trailer above) has surpasses the 20 million downloads mark (as of April 4th), with strong performance across the Asia region. On Google Play, it’s currently the top game in Thailand and Taiwan, and on iOS it’s the top game in Laos and Indonesia. Such milestones are pretty common for Line’s repertoire of casual games, but Cookie Run (released in late January) has been rather quick, picking up 10 million in its first month and another 10 million in 36 days after that. Via Gamebiz.jp

Line’s ‘Cookie Run’ game (trailer above) has surpasses the 20 million downloads mark (as of April 4th), with strong performance across the Asia region. On Google Play, it’s currently the top game in Thailand and Taiwan, and on iOS it’s the top game in Laos and Indonesia.

Such milestones are pretty common for Line’s repertoire of casual games, but Cookie Run (released in late January) has been rather quick, picking up 10 million in its first month and another 10 million in 36 days after that.

Via Gamebiz.jp

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Japan’s Jorte aspires to be a calendar for everyone

Rick Martin 2014.04.07

With over 20 million downloads under its belt, Jorte is perhaps Japan’s most successful calendar app. Speaking as more of a power user who integrates a number of tools – Fantastical and Drafts – as a composite solution for my daily schedule, Jorte is not for me. I think it’s a mobile design disaster of overcrowded text [1], but interestingly, it seems makes a lot of sense to mainstream users. And that’s who Jorte is trying to serve. When I spoke to Jorte representatives recently, including founder and CEO Koichi Shimohana, I was told that their aim is not to appeal to geeks, but rather to build a calendar app that the general public would use. And that approach appears to have been very successful considering its large userbase [2]. By implementing a more accessible, traditional-looking calendar design, Jorte is casting its net very wide. Here in Japan that strategy already has brought in a big catch, with still some room to grow domestically. Jorte started on Android in 2010, and so far 90% of their users are on that platform. The Jorte iOS app, released in late 2012, is just catching up to its Android counterpart in terms of…

With over 20 million downloads under its belt, Jorte is perhaps Japan’s most successful calendar app. Speaking as more of a power user who integrates a number of tools – Fantastical and Drafts – as a composite solution for my daily schedule, Jorte is not for me. I think it’s a mobile design disaster of overcrowded text [1], but interestingly, it seems makes a lot of sense to mainstream users.

And that’s who Jorte is trying to serve.

When I spoke to Jorte representatives recently, including founder and CEO Koichi Shimohana, I was told that their aim is not to appeal to geeks, but rather to build a calendar app that the general public would use. And that approach appears to have been very successful considering its large userbase [2]. By implementing a more accessible, traditional-looking calendar design, Jorte is casting its net very wide. Here in Japan that strategy already has brought in a big catch, with still some room to grow domestically.

Jorte started on Android in 2010, and so far 90% of their users are on that platform. The Jorte iOS app, released in late 2012, is just catching up to its Android counterpart in terms of features, but iPhone users certainly represent a growth opportunity. I’m told that the company is shooting for 35 million users overall by the end of this year.

Unlike most calendar apps, Jorte has taken more of a content-based approach with its product. There are an incredible amount of things that you can import and track, such as the schedule of your favorite baseball team, your neighborhood’s garbage/recycling pick-up schedule, or a DVD rental release calendar. The company has more than 50 partners providing 10,000 of such ‘interest calendars’. I understand that one of their possible business models is to give a priority listing position to a company or content provider in a certain category [3].

As for Jorte’s overseas performance, it’s global user breakdown is as follows:

Obviously in order to do well abroad, proper localization will be key. And to date Jorte has wisely made use of its user community assist with that effort over on its translation project home page. In the app’s English version, certain UI text still needs work before they can make a serious push to US and European markets. Jorte faces competition from Naver and Daum in Korea, but the size of the Android market there is obviously a very attractive one.

If you’d like to try out Jorte for yourself, I encourage you to give it a try. You can get it for free over on the App Store or on Google Play.

There are options to adjust and customize, but for me, it’s a bit too troublesome. ↩
On iOS, my guess if that that more people use the default calendar app. But I always see Jorte ranking quite high among calendar apps in the productivity category, typically in the top three. ↩
Other monetization methods include paid icon sets, background sets, and more. ↩

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US-Japan entrepreneur exchange program now accepting 2014 applicants

Tomodachi-Mitsui & Co. Leadership Program

Rick Martin 2014.04.06

The Tomodachi-Mitsui & Co. Leadership Program, a US/Japan cross-cultural entrepreneur exchange, has just begun accepting applications for its 2014 program: Ten Americans and ten Japanese aged 35 or younger and representing the public and private sectors will travel to each others’ country for one week to engage as a group and meet with established and up-and- coming leaders from business and government. The American delegation will travel to Fukuoka and Tokyo, and the Japanese delegation will travel to Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The application deadline is April 11th for US entrepreneurs, and April 18th for Japanese entrepreneurs. If you’d like to learn more details about the program and how to apply, check out usjapantomodachi.org or this PDF overview.

The Tomodachi-Mitsui & Co. Leadership Program, a US/Japan cross-cultural entrepreneur exchange, has just begun accepting applications for its 2014 program:

Ten Americans and ten Japanese aged 35 or younger and representing the public and private sectors will travel to each others’ country for one week to engage as a group and meet with established and up-and- coming leaders from business and government. The American delegation will travel to Fukuoka and Tokyo, and the Japanese delegation will travel to Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.

The application deadline is April 11th for US entrepreneurs, and April 18th for Japanese entrepreneurs. If you’d like to learn more details about the program and how to apply, check out usjapantomodachi.org or this PDF overview.

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Korean growth hacking tool 5Rocks comes out of beta, planning global expansion

5Rocks
Korea

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.06

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian. The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU. 5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase,…

See the original version of this article, written in Japanese

We have mentioned 5Rocks, a Korean-based growth hacking tool for mobile apps many times before. In August of 2013, the startup raised $2.3 million from Japanese venture capital Global Brain, and it expanded the business to Japan [1]. The product has been adopted by many game developers such as Gumi, Pokelabo, MyNet, Mutations Studio, KLab and NewsTech. The beta version has been operating for more than a half year now, but recently on April 2nd, the official version of 5Rocks was finally released, and is available in five languages, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, and Russian.

The pricing for the Japanese market was announced as well. There is a charge of one yen (about $0.01) is charged for each monthly active user for an app. If you have less than 10,000 MAU, then it’s free. The maximum fee would be 300,000 yen ($3000), for any app that has more than 30,000 MAU.

5Rocks offers a SDK as well, which game developers can implement into their app to acquire and analyze users activity data. In this new official version, 5Rocks added some new features based on the feedback from their beta phase, including the ability to chart correlation of user activity (who log-in regularly) and sales.

The chart indicates the variation of users, according to frequency of gameplay

A chart showing sales

The chart showing the number of the users playing a game in real time was particularly interesting (see below). I hear that some game developers even project this chart on a big screen in their office just to help motivate employees.

A growth hacking tool needs more than just data acquisition and the analysis. It needs to let game developers take action based on results. For that purpose, 5Rocks provide two added features: promotion and push-notification. Both functions target specific clusters of users based on certain attributes and lets game developers to send messages to those users’ smartphones by uploading images or text to 5Rocks’ dashboard. These features are adopted in the SDK, so members in charge of marketing can proceed with promotions or A/B tests without requiring support from engineers.

Promotion page: Select user attributes on the left. The image on the right is the ad for the promotion.

The promotion displayed in the app

According to Japan country manager, Yasuo Sato, 5Rocks has been adopted by about 80 game developers in Korea and Japan and about 200 apps. The company plans to expand to elsewhere in Asia, with the goal of being used by 3000 apps by the end of this year.

The competition in this field is quite fierce, with Kaizen’s planBCD just announcing that it has raised $5 million, and will expand to the US. There’s also Singapore-based Unicon which operates Fello, and CyberAgent subsidiary Sirok which operates Growth Push, Growth Replay, and Growth Point.

The startup began as an online reservation application, but has since evolved to different business. ↩

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Japanese accounting startup Crowd Cast introduces its expense reimbursement app on Android

Masaru Ikeda 2014.04.06

Our readers may recall back in December when we mentioned that Japanese startup Crowd Cast was planning to release a mobile app for expenses, intended to help office workers save time in corporate expense reimbursements. Following the launch of its on iOS back in January, the company introduced an Android version last week. If an administrator at your company sets up a corporate account on the service, you and your colleagues can access it through the mobile app. The application also lets you attach photos of receipts for expenses paid, making it easier to submit proof of payment to administrators. There are three monthly fee options depending on the size of your company: $4 (390 yen) for up to three users, $7 (690 yen) for up to ten users, and $10 (980 yen) for up to 20 users. Interestingly they provide all features for free to non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs attending or doing business with a university or a business school. via TechCrunch Japan

Our readers may recall back in December when we mentioned that Japanese startup Crowd Cast was planning to release a mobile app for expenses, intended to help office workers save time in corporate expense reimbursements. Following the launch of its on iOS back in January, the company introduced an Android version last week.

If an administrator at your company sets up a corporate account on the service, you and your colleagues can access it through the mobile app. The application also lets you attach photos of receipts for expenses paid, making it easier to submit proof of payment to administrators.

There are three monthly fee options depending on the size of your company: $4 (390 yen) for up to three users, $7 (690 yen) for up to ten users, and $10 (980 yen) for up to 20 users. Interestingly they provide all features for free to non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs attending or doing business with a university or a business school.

via TechCrunch Japan

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