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What’s so special about Line? [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.02.15

Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin. Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line. With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second. For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services. NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to…

Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin.

Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line.

With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second.

For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services.

NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to 400 million users.

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

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Yahoo Japan’s Face Stealer app transforms you into Obama, or anyone else you’d like to be

Rick Martin 2013.02.13

Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above). Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from. While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube. It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.

Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above).

Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from.

While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube.

It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.

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Rage of Bahamut and Japan’s quest for global gamers

Rick Martin 2013.02.13

One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012. While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million. I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino…

One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012.

While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million.

I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino and Koichi Watanabe who originally developed the Rage of Bahamut concept. I asked him if they were confident that such mobile game genre like card battle games – which at that point were only really proven in Japan – could excel in overseas markets.

To be honest, not really. Back then, no card games like the ones popular in Japan had become breakout hits overseas. We really felt that there would be no way to know without giving it a try.

Cygames had ridden DeNA’s Mobage platform to success in Japan, and they thought perhaps the success of the partnership could extend overseas. DeNA executive Junichi Akagawa noted that they did think that “the desire to collect cool cards should be something universal,” and because of great artwork and past success in the Japanese market, they certainly thought it had the potential to be a hit internationally.

Evolving abroad ¶

Since then, as we all know, Bahamut has been performed amazingly well on top grossing app charts, displaying surprising staying power (see charts below). Kimura says one reason for the games success is because they are always updating and improving it. In terms of making the game appealing for English-speaking users, there was some reworking of the design as well to appeal to Western audiences.

When I recently spoke to the folks from app metrics firm App Annie, one representative also cited outstanding marketing as one of the main reasons why Bahamut has done so well. But it’s important to note that the game was marketed differently abroad than it was in its home market. While the game was heavily advertised on television in and with out-of-home ads in Japan, a referral code system played a large role in helping the game spread in overseas markets. I can attest to this first hand actually, as anything that I’ve written about Bahamut in the past tends to attract a ton of comments from gamers who want to share their codes with others [1].

The game’s impressive artwork has surely helped Bahamut’s popularity among gamers, and I’m told that Cygames illustrator’s have previously worked on Japanese ‘AAA’ game titles [2]. In fact, a collection of artwork from the game was recently published as a book and is now available on Amazon Japan.

Kimura says that in total, the amount of people who worked on Bahamut is roughly the same as would be required for a console.

Whatever the reason for Bahamut’s popularity to date, it’s certainly a good example of a Japanese export thriving on a global scale. February 21st will mark the one-year anniversary of Bahamut on ‘Mobage West,’ so it will be interesting to watch Cygames moving forward with this and other titles for the international market.

¶

appannie.com — Rage of Bahamut on iOS top grossing charts

More recently, I’ve observed the same with Battle Cats, although this referral code mechanic is by no means unique to these two. ↩
I’m not sure what AAA means, but you can bet it’s way better than AA. ↩

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Japanese app ‘Poica’ wants to carry all your point cards

Rick Martin 2013.02.11

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out). The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1]. Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants,…

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out).

The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1].

Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, or electronic retailers. But technically speaking, I guess almost any card with a barcode would be acceptable. I even store some of my wife’s cards, just to impress her when I get dragged along shopping!

There are some drawbacks however. Not every point card in my collection comes with a bar code. Some of them just include a number, in which case, you cannot enter your card into Poica. But given that it’s a free app, it’s hard to really go wrong with Poica. In contrast, Card Bank – a similar application – costs 99 cents.

Poica just released a 2.0 version a few days ago with a few minor improvements, so now is as good a time as any to check it out.

Note that the bar code in my video is not an actual point card, but just the bar code from a random book. ↩

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Japanese mobile game ‘Battle Cats’ hits 2 million downloads [Gameplay Video]

SCORE 1,079

Rick Martin 2013.02.08

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor. After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too. For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it. Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor.

After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too.

For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it.

Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

battle-cats-ponos-sm — From AppAnnie.com

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Lang-8: The language learning startup that’s playing the long game

Takeshi Hirano 2013.02.07

Lang–8, launched in 2007, is a language-learning platform in which users from different language backgrounds can socially correct each other’s writings. The CEO YangYang Xi started the service when he was 23 years old while studying at Kyoto University. Xi, born in China and raised in Japan, got the idea of the language-learning platform from keeping a diary, in which he asked friends to correct his own writings (in Chinese) when he was studying in Shanghai. Six years, half a million users later ¶ Skip to the present day in 2013, and Lang–8’s user base is about to reach 510,000, with the current active user rate at about 10%. The service is used by people in 190 countries, 70% of them from outside Japan. The primary users are business professionals. While the 500,000 user milestone is an impressive one, the company took more than a little while to get there. When asked about this six-year journey, Xi says he didn’t experience real growth until about a year ago, and that it took a lot of preparation to reach this point. Having started his career as a student entrepreneur, the first order of business was research and development. The service needed…

Lang–8, launched in 2007, is a language-learning platform in which users from different language backgrounds can socially correct each other’s writings.

The CEO YangYang Xi started the service when he was 23 years old while studying at Kyoto University. Xi, born in China and raised in Japan, got the idea of the language-learning platform from keeping a diary, in which he asked friends to correct his own writings (in Chinese) when he was studying in Shanghai.

Six years, half a million users later ¶

Skip to the present day in 2013, and Lang–8’s user base is about to reach 510,000, with the current active user rate at about 10%. The service is used by people in 190 countries, 70% of them from outside Japan. The primary users are business professionals.

While the 500,000 user milestone is an impressive one, the company took more than a little while to get there. When asked about this six-year journey, Xi says he didn’t experience real growth until about a year ago, and that it took a lot of preparation to reach this point.

Having started his career as a student entrepreneur, the first order of business was research and development. The service needed to expand enough to be profitable. Initially Lang–8’s staff spent the majority of their time on site development and other technical elements. But two years after launch, Xi had a bit of a falling out with his engineer. Abandoned and left alone to nervously face 15 servers on his own, he decided that he couldn’t entrust his work to other people. That moment prompted him to make an effort to learn programming, and in the following two years, he learned development skills by interning at a friend’s company.

Interestingly, this period of personal growth for Xi coincided with strong user growth on the site as well – likely not a coincidence.

In 2009, Lang–8 received an angel investment of about 10 million yen from four private investors, including Nishikawa Kiyoshi of NetAge. In order to raise more funds, he will have to prove that Lang–8 has real growth potential. And that means addressing one key problem: smartphone support. Lang–8′s competitor busuuu experienced sudden growth as an iPhone application, reaching 1,9000,000 users. And while Lang–8′s userbase is not as large, its position as a social network is unique. If solid smartphone support is added, Xi believes it could become a serious competitor.

The other crucial point is monetization. Xi explained several of his ideas for controlling the corrections which play a central role in the service. For example, whether an entry receives corrections can be an issue. About 60% of English entries get corrected, as compared to 80% of entries in other languages. But a paid service could ensure that all entries are corrected. The jump from free to paid is never easy, but if that’s what users are looking for, it may possible.

Belief in an idea ¶

Xi’s six-year journey from a struggling student startup to a community of 500,000 has certainly not been a glamorous one – although his persistence is certainly admirable. But compared to the explosive growth of social gaming and chat services in recent years, Lang–8′s growth rate might not grab the attention of investors.

Even with the recent improvement in user growth, there must have moments when Xi considered throwing in the towel. But he asserts, “I feel it has potential, and that’s why I can continue.” There are several entrepreneuers who are currently supporting him as mentors, and hopefully this can help with his plans to grow and expand his staff in the future.

That kind of unshakable belief in an idea is what has carried him this far. And with any luck, it’ll continue to drive him as he takes Lang8 to the next level.

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How Japan’s SnapDish app catered to foreign foodies

Junya Mori 2013.02.06

Many mobile applications from Japan aspire to reach a global audience. The food photo and recipe-sharing mobile app SnapDish is an example of such app. And so far, it has fared well. Up until now it has been available in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Korean. But it recently announced the addition of seven more: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Indonesian, and Thai. Snapdish now potentially supports three billion people speaking those eleven languages around the world. The app, which lets cooking enthusiasts edit and share food photos, was launched in May 2011. To date it has cataloged more than 1.7 million pictures, with more than 10 million Yummies (similar to a Facebook’s Like function). SnapDish is getting more and more popular, mainly among people who cook at home. They are able to connect with a wide range of people and chat about cooking through photos and recipes. We recently spoke to a SnapDish representative in charge of language support. His comments follow below. SnapDish on going global SnapDish representative: When developing and designing the app, which we launched in May of 2011, we had overseas users in mind from the very beginning and we planned…

Many mobile applications from Japan aspire to reach a global audience. The food photo and recipe-sharing mobile app SnapDish is an example of such app. And so far, it has fared well.

Up until now it has been available in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Korean. But it recently announced the addition of seven more: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Indonesian, and Thai. Snapdish now potentially supports three billion people speaking those eleven languages around the world.

The app, which lets cooking enthusiasts edit and share food photos, was launched in May 2011. To date it has cataloged more than 1.7 million pictures, with more than 10 million Yummies (similar to a Facebook’s Like function).

SnapDish is getting more and more popular, mainly among people who cook at home. They are able to connect with a wide range of people and chat about cooking through photos and recipes. We recently spoke to a SnapDish representative in charge of language support. His comments follow below.

SnapDish on going global

SnapDish representative: When developing and designing the app, which we launched in May of 2011, we had overseas users in mind from the very beginning and we planned to launch its English and Japanese versions at the same time. So with the intention of having an English user interface, instead of simply translating the context literally, we designed the app so it would be easy to use for both Japanese and non-Japanese users.

We also paid close attention to whether or not English expressions in the app sound fun for English users. For example, there is a button called Mogu Mogu in the Japanese version. This works like Facebook’s Like button and users can click it when they like other users’ photos. But in the English version, this button is instead labeled Yummy. Whereas Mogu mogu translates more literally into English as nom nom or chomp chomp, but since such expressions are not as friendly or appealing in English, SnapDish chose the more natural-sounding Yummy. We are taking equal care to use natural expressions as we expand into other languages.

As a result, the application has been regularly downloaded overseas since its initial release. The app gained many users, particularly in Southeast Asia and Chinese-speaking regions, and we quickly learned that it’s not only Japanese foodies, but also folks in other Asian countries like the combination of food and photos.

Even after launching apps, we figure out users’ needs and try to meet those them. For example, genres that can be tagged on pictures are customized to each countries’ food culture. Since the application was developed from the very beginning with foreign users in mind, many users overseas regularly report that they didn’t realize that the application was Japanese. American users often assume that it was developed in an English-speaking country. Such feedback confirms that even foreign users can use the application seamlessly.

Building the business

SnapDish representative: Last year, we expanded our service further by partnering with large foreign companies such as China’s Renren.com and Korea’s SK Planet. Thanks to these partnerships we realized that there are many people who think the SnapDish app can meet the needs of Asian consumers, and that our service can add value.

Also, we actively applied for overseas startup pitch events last year and participated in Singapore’s Echelon in June, Taiwan’s IDEAS Show in July, and GMIC-SV which was held in San Jose, USA, in October. At those events, we not only made presentations but also set up our booth in venues, so we were able to talk with existing overseas users and build our network. We were even interviewed by foreign media companies, so it was very beneficial from a promotional standpoint as well.

We were well-received especially in Asia, and we had a chance to pitch at Echelon as one of the top 10 startups selected from six Asian countries. We asked an event organizer about the reason why we were selected, and we were told that we differentiated our app from other food photo apps with a home-cooking feature, and that it was great that we had developed a monetization plan.

What’s next for SnapDish?

SnapDish rep: While still paying attention to details in the app, we are looking to provide promotional and communication features that fit in with each local market. For example, we are planning to launch our gift campaign, which is only available in Japan at the moment, to foreign markets.

We continue to put our priority on Asia for our international business. Of course, it doesn’t mean that other regions such as Europe are not important. In Asia, we have already established a substantial user base and are forming a community there. We are already well-grounded in the Asian market, so we would like to solidify that market position.

We also want to continue to take part in pitch events abroad, and at the same time, just like we promoted our service in Asia last year, we are looking for a chance to do the same in Europe as well.

If you want to download SnapDish, you can get it here for iOS and Android.

(Photo: e27)

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Japanese fashion coordination site iQON raises $3.2M, will boost marketing efforts

Takeshi Hirano 2013.02.04

See original story in Japanese Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011. The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month. The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing…

See original story in Japanese

Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011.

The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month.

The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing efforts from now on.

When discussing fashion e-commerce sites in Japan, we can’t help but mention Zozotown (listed on the Tokyo Mothers exchange since 2007). The site is a partner for Vasily rather than a competitor because the two companies have different business models and won’t compete and/or conflict. Vasily’s CEO, Yuki Kanayama, says they will keep working closely with their good partner Zozotown in the future.

IMGP5778 — Vasily Inc.’s CEO: Yuki Kanayama

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In Japan, there is no escaping Rakuten’s reach

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.04

Rakuten-Ichiba, Japan’s biggest online mall, celebrated its 15th anniversary last May. Rakuten (JSD:4755) originally launched back in May of 1997, with just thirteen online stores. It took them seven years and five months to reach 10,000 stores. Now, the total number of stores exceeds 38,000 and the total items sold is over 95.6 million. Rakuten has managed to reach over half of the total population of Japan, reaching about 75 million registered users out of the 130 million who live in the country. According to Rakuten’s 15th year anniversary announcement, until 2003 what sold on Rakuten were items that could only be bought online. In 2004, more consumers were buying food and gourmet items. It wasn’t until around 2008 when people began to buy fashion and apparel online 1. And in 2010, offerings expanded further as consumers began to buy everyday necessities such as water and rice online. Rakuten has essentially overseen the entire history of online shopping in Japan. It is more difficult to find what’s not available on Rakuten than to find what is available. From electronics, to toys, to beauty products – almost anything can be found on Rakuten. The main categories in order of popularity are…

Rakuten-Ichiba, Japan’s biggest online mall, celebrated its 15th anniversary last May. Rakuten (JSD:4755) originally launched back in May of 1997, with just thirteen online stores. It took them seven years and five months to reach 10,000 stores. Now, the total number of stores exceeds 38,000 and the total items sold is over 95.6 million.

Rakuten has managed to reach over half of the total population of Japan, reaching about 75 million registered users out of the 130 million who live in the country. According to Rakuten’s 15th year anniversary announcement, until 2003 what sold on Rakuten were items that could only be bought online. In 2004, more consumers were buying food and gourmet items. It wasn’t until around 2008 when people began to buy fashion and apparel online ¹. And in 2010, offerings expanded further as consumers began to buy everyday necessities such as water and rice online.

Rakuten has essentially overseen the entire history of online shopping in Japan.

It is more difficult to find what’s not available on Rakuten than to find what is available. From electronics, to toys, to beauty products – almost anything can be found on Rakuten. The main categories in order of popularity are food, women’s fashion, daily necessities/stationary, furniture, and men’s fashion.

According to a mobile usage survey conducted by Ceres Inc., 84.2% of respondents have engaged in online shopping. But where are they shopping? It turns out Rakuten is the most popular destination, favored by 68.5% of respondents. Amazon and Yahoo Shopping followed, with 58.0% and 38.6% respectively ². One of the most remarkable things about Rakuten’s user base is the survey says it appears to be favored by older segments of the population, as you can see below:

Ages	Percentage
10-19	34.9
20-29	65.6
30-39	72.1
40-49	72.1
50-59	77.2

In contrast, Amazon is preferred by younger users. The fact that Japan’s population is growing older and older is amazingly working in Rakuten’s favor.

As far as Rakuten’s website design goes, I am not their biggest fan. It shows far too much information at once and is much in need of an overhaul. But similar to Craigslist, people appear to have adjusted to the confusing and cluttered design – and it might even be a risk to change that now. But the design issue is not stopping more and more stores from joining Rakuten’s mall. And they still have lots of room to grow, since the online rate of the retail industry in Japan is only 2.8% ³. The rest are still small stores selling offline.

When you search for an item to buy, whether on Google or Yahoo, Rakuten items always show up on the first page of the search result. Popular blogs using Rakuten’s affiliate service make it difficult to escape, as their sidebar widgets remind you of products you may have been recently browsing on Rakuten. The company sends out millions of newsletters by store or by item category.

Here in Japan Rakuten dominates e-commerce, and if you frequent the Japanese web, there is practically no escape from its reach. As they expand abroad, it will be interesting to see how far that reach can extend!

This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan.

A competing fashion e-commerce service called Zozotown launched in December of 2004, they were a bit ahead of their time, although with the right vision, successfully turned itself into the biggest online fashion mall.↩
Another recent survey of elderly consumers found that 90% of respondents use Rakuten, followed by Amazon at 55.2%, and Yahoo Shopping at 27.0%.↩
Report published by Ministry of Economy. ↩

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Slimmed down and refreshed: Sleipnir 4 Browser for Mac, from Japan’s Fenrir Inc [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.02.04

I’m a Google Chrome user, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon due. But I’m always eager to see the alternatives that are available out there, and Osaka-based Fenrir Inc. is always an interesting company to watch with its unusual Sleipnir browser. Recently the company has been toying with a tabbed interface, and the latest iteration of its browser for Mac, Sleipnir 4, continues that experiment. The menu bar is slimmed down, with thumbnail previews of your tabs giving you a visual representation of the pages you’re on. Sleipnir 4 saves space by moving the text preview of the tab to a mouseover pop-out (see below), which allowed the designers to shrink the height of the toolbar to a mere 52 pixels. This gives a little bit of breathing room to the address bar, which has stepped into the shadows in a subtle grey display in the top right. To input an address, you can simply click it and edit, or press ⌥⌘ L [1]. This is not new to Sleipnir 4.0, as the quasi-hidden address bar feature was present in Sleipnir 3.5 as well. But the company’s marketing materials look to be spotlighting the address bar this time…

I’m a Google Chrome user, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon due. But I’m always eager to see the alternatives that are available out there, and Osaka-based Fenrir Inc. is always an interesting company to watch with its unusual Sleipnir browser.

Recently the company has been toying with a tabbed interface, and the latest iteration of its browser for Mac, Sleipnir 4, continues that experiment. The menu bar is slimmed down, with thumbnail previews of your tabs giving you a visual representation of the pages you’re on. Sleipnir 4 saves space by moving the text preview of the tab to a mouseover pop-out (see below), which allowed the designers to shrink the height of the toolbar to a mere 52 pixels.

This gives a little bit of breathing room to the address bar, which has stepped into the shadows in a subtle grey display in the top right. To input an address, you can simply click it and edit, or press ⌥⌘ L [1]. This is not new to Sleipnir 4.0, as the quasi-hidden address bar feature was present in Sleipnir 3.5 as well. But the company’s marketing materials look to be spotlighting the address bar this time around.

Sleipnir's Browser tabs, and address bar — Sleipnir’s Browser tabs and address bar

And perhaps most interestingly, the browser supports a swipe gesture to navigate between tabs. For the most part, the gesture works well, although I did trip up on occasion and stumble into the browsers tiled interface, which is an alternative view that I’m not really a fan of [2]. There are other gestures available in the preferences, but they’re a little over-complicated in my opinion.

Just below the address bar is Sleipnir’s search bar, where there are some fun features to be found as well. I was pleased to find that I can add my own favorite search engines in addition to the defaults, just by adding a typical search URL string with ‘%@’ replacing the query. So this means you can use things like DuckDuckGo, YouTube, IMDB, or any search you like. Each one can then be triggered by a keyword shortcut, which is pretty handy. There’s also integration with Fenrir’s Pass service, which is useful too.

If you’d like to try it the new Sleipnir 4 for yourself, you can get it over at SleipnirBrowser.com. Try it out and let us know what you think.

You can find a full list of keyboard shortcuts here. ↩
Feel free to try it out for yourself, but I found it the tile interface a little bit confusing, without any obvious uses. ↩

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