news

Mynd: Japan’s latest news app is one of its prettiest

Rick Martin 2014.04.16

This week we witnessed yet another entrant into Japan’s mobile news app space. It’s called Mynd, and it comes from Tokyo-based TomyK, led by Tomihisa Kamada. The app has a very beautiful UI with a number of slick translucent elements (pictured below). It also supports a wide range of external services, including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Pocket, and Hatena. Users can opt to read news at any time, or have a summary delivered to them every morning (like Gunosy does, for example). The single article view defaults to the source’s own web view rather than stripped down text view [1], which is a mistake in my view – but this appears to be common practice among news apps in Japan. It’s interesting to see more and more new apps emerging in this space to challenge the likes of Gunosy and SmartNews. I hope to bring you a closer look at this sector in the near future, so stay tuned for that. For now, if you’d like to give Mynd a try, it’s available as a free download for iOS and Android. Think Instapaper, Readability, or even SmartNews’s ‘Smartmode’. ↩

This week we witnessed yet another entrant into Japan’s mobile news app space. It’s called Mynd, and it comes from Tokyo-based TomyK, led by Tomihisa Kamada.

The app has a very beautiful UI with a number of slick translucent elements (pictured below). It also supports a wide range of external services, including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Pocket, and Hatena. Users can opt to read news at any time, or have a summary delivered to them every morning (like Gunosy does, for example). The single article view defaults to the source’s own web view rather than stripped down text view [1], which is a mistake in my view – but this appears to be common practice among news apps in Japan.

It’s interesting to see more and more new apps emerging in this space to challenge the likes of Gunosy and SmartNews. I hope to bring you a closer look at this sector in the near future, so stay tuned for that.

For now, if you’d like to give Mynd a try, it’s available as a free download for iOS and Android.

Think Instapaper, Readability, or even SmartNews’s ‘Smartmode’. ↩

news

Popular Korean app ‘Noon Date’ launches in Japan

SCORE 1,095

Rick Martin 2014.04.14

The Korean dating app ‘Noon Date’, which has over 700,000 downloads in its home country thus far, is now launching in the Japanese market through a partnership with Tokyo-based Waku+. It will be called OhiruDate, and it requires Facebook authorization for a more reliable identity verification. OhiruDate delivers two profile cards to you each day at noon, and if you and that person mutually like each other, you can become friends and chat. The idea is similar to MatchAlarm (backed by CyberAgent Ventures), which recommends a new person every morning at 8am. Ohirudate is available for iOS and Google Play.

The Korean dating app ‘Noon Date’, which has over 700,000 downloads in its home country thus far, is now launching in the Japanese market through a partnership with Tokyo-based Waku+. It will be called OhiruDate, and it requires Facebook authorization for a more reliable identity verification.

OhiruDate delivers two profile cards to you each day at noon, and if you and that person mutually like each other, you can become friends and chat. The idea is similar to MatchAlarm (backed by CyberAgent Ventures), which recommends a new person every morning at 8am.

Ohirudate is available for iOS and Google Play.

news

Japan’s Cookpad boasts 20M app downloads, 40M monthly users

Rick Martin 2014.04.10

Cookpad, the operator of Japan’s leading recipe sharing website, announced today that downloads of its mobile apps (for iOS and Android) have surpassed 20 million. In addition, the service now boasts 40 million monthly users, of which six percent engage using smartphones. You can see the chart above for a more detailed breakdown of Cookpad user access across devices. Cookpad

Cookpad, the operator of Japan’s leading recipe sharing website, announced today that downloads of its mobile apps (for iOS and Android) have surpassed 20 million.

In addition, the service now boasts 40 million monthly users, of which six percent engage using smartphones. You can see the chart above for a more detailed breakdown of Cookpad user access across devices.

Cookpad

news

Colopl’s ‘Quiz RPG’ notches 23M downloads, ‘Slingshot Braves’ off to fast start

Rick Martin 2014.04.08

Japanese game developer Colopl announced today that its hit mobile game Quiz RPG now has 23 million downloads in Japan. The game is also available in English (see our video demo below), but hasn’t received the attention – nor the promotion – that it has in its home market. Meanwhile one of the company’s newer games, Slingshot Braves, notched its first million downloads on April 2nd. I’ve played it just a little so far, but for a smartphone title the graphics are really great, and the slingshot controls (reminiscent of Mixi’s Monster Strike) are super fun as well. This is a pretty hot start considering that the title initially launched on Android on February 27, and just recently on iOS on March 29th. For those who haven’t heard of Colopl, it’s because the company appears to not really care about its global business just yet, even though the company has games in English and is talking about other markets [1]. They clearly understand gaming, but as for branding, Colopl has my personal nomination for the worst-named company ever. How the hell is an English-speaking person expected to pronounce ‘Colopl’? Seriously. ↩

Japanese game developer Colopl announced today that its hit mobile game Quiz RPG now has 23 million downloads in Japan. The game is also available in English (see our video demo below), but hasn’t received the attention – nor the promotion – that it has in its home market.

Meanwhile one of the company’s newer games, Slingshot Braves, notched its first million downloads on April 2nd. I’ve played it just a little so far, but for a smartphone title the graphics are really great, and the slingshot controls (reminiscent of Mixi’s Monster Strike) are super fun as well. This is a pretty hot start considering that the title initially launched on Android on February 27, and just recently on iOS on March 29th.

For those who haven’t heard of Colopl, it’s because the company appears to not really care about its global business just yet, even though the company has games in English and is talking about other markets [1].

They clearly understand gaming, but as for branding, Colopl has my personal nomination for the worst-named company ever. How the hell is an English-speaking person expected to pronounce ‘Colopl’? Seriously. ↩

news

Japan’s Zeppelin brings vibrant filters to your mobile video

Rick Martin 2014.04.08

Tokyo-based design house Zeppelin was one of many Japanese companies that made the trip to SXSW in Austin, Texas last month. The company has previously done UI/UX work for many large clients in Japan and around Asia, but recently it is venturing to create some products of its own. The most notable of these is perhaps its VideoShader iOS app, which lets you apply photo filters on top of your mobile videos. What’s fun about this is that when you pick a filter, your viewfinder video is previewed in realtime, along with the option to increase or decrease the intensity with a slider tool. I particularly enjoyed the ‘red detector’ filter, which enables you to do some really creative stuff, as you can see in the rough test clip below. Note that I’m adjusting the effects slider as I record, which is making the effect do different things during video capture. There are a number of other attractive filters like ‘motion blur’ and ‘tilt shift’, although those are available as premium add-ons. There is also a VideoShader pro version available, which the company says enables users to create their custom filters without knowing any code, but I’ve not tested that…

Tokyo-based design house Zeppelin was one of many Japanese companies that made the trip to SXSW in Austin, Texas last month. The company has previously done UI/UX work for many large clients in Japan and around Asia, but recently it is venturing to create some products of its own.

The most notable of these is perhaps its VideoShader iOS app, which lets you apply photo filters on top of your mobile videos. What’s fun about this is that when you pick a filter, your viewfinder video is previewed in realtime, along with the option to increase or decrease the intensity with a slider tool.

I particularly enjoyed the ‘red detector’ filter, which enables you to do some really creative stuff, as you can see in the rough test clip below. Note that I’m adjusting the effects slider as I record, which is making the effect do different things during video capture.

There are a number of other attractive filters like ‘motion blur’ and ‘tilt shift’, although those are available as premium add-ons. There is also a VideoShader pro version available, which the company says enables users to create their custom filters without knowing any code, but I’ve not tested that particular feature myself yet.

Zeppelin is planning to expand to the US soon, in an effort to increase their reach among global consumers with projects like VideoShader. CEO and founder Kohei Torigoe explained the rationale behind driving for such an expansion:

If VideoShader can reach one million or five million users in Japan for example, it would be difficult to expand beyond that. But if we can reach that same total from the US, then would be easier to reach out to the world.

I understand that an updated version of VideoShader is coming very soon, so we can look forward to a more simplified interface coming pretty soon.

The company has a few other fun projects in the works as well, including its voice-assistant app ‘Jarvis’ (think Iron Man), and I’m looking forward to seeing how that develops.

For more on Zeppelin check out their website, or watch founder Torigoe below as he gives a brief introduction to his company.

news

Line launches its kids’ movie app on iOS

Rick Martin 2014.04.07

See our report on Line Kids Movies in Japanese A few weeks back Line Corporation announced that it would be releasing a movie app for children called Line Kids Movies. That application officially went live today on iOS [1], and if you’re in Japan and have kids, you may want to check it out. Programs included on the platform include Astro Boy, Pokemon, and Doraemon. As we mentioned previously, it’s a paid subscription service. But you can also earn watching time by sharing videos to your friends as well. As you can see in the screenshot below, there’s a timer in the top corner that tracks your remaining video time, an interesting device that will likely serve as a interesting way to bring new users to the service. I personally wouldn’t pay for such a service right now, but if it were ever to become available as a dedicated app on Apple TV, I’d likely give it a try. Android will follow soon. ↩

See our report on Line Kids Movies in Japanese

A few weeks back Line Corporation announced that it would be releasing a movie app for children called Line Kids Movies. That application officially went live today on iOS [1], and if you’re in Japan and have kids, you may want to check it out. Programs included on the platform include Astro Boy, Pokemon, and Doraemon.

As we mentioned previously, it’s a paid subscription service. But you can also earn watching time by sharing videos to your friends as well. As you can see in the screenshot below, there’s a timer in the top corner that tracks your remaining video time, an interesting device that will likely serve as a interesting way to bring new users to the service.

I personally wouldn’t pay for such a service right now, but if it were ever to become available as a dedicated app on Apple TV, I’d likely give it a try.

Android will follow soon. ↩

news

TV ads march Mixi’s Monster Strike past 5M users

Rick Martin 2014.04.07

Mixi has announced today that its popular puzzle RPG game, Monster Strike, now has 5 million users. It initially launched on iOS back in September of 2013, and then on Android in December. Mixi announced in February that it would partner with Chinese internet giant Tencent to bring Monster Strike to China, ostensibly the first localization for the title when it happens. The game is still (to my knowledge) only available in Japanese, but if you’d like to give it a try, it’s a free download on iOS and Google Play. The success of Monster Strike thus far has been credited with helping the company return to profit this year, and former general manager of the game department Hiroki Morite was recently named to become Mixi’s new CEO, leading into what the company is calling a ‘regrowth’ stage. Mixi has been promoting Monster Strike heavily on television in Japan, and its commercials have resulted in the last million users coming in just 18 days. Mixi

Mixi has announced today that its popular puzzle RPG game, Monster Strike, now has 5 million users. It initially launched on iOS back in September of 2013, and then on Android in December.

Mixi announced in February that it would partner with Chinese internet giant Tencent to bring Monster Strike to China, ostensibly the first localization for the title when it happens. The game is still (to my knowledge) only available in Japanese, but if you’d like to give it a try, it’s a free download on iOS and Google Play.

The success of Monster Strike thus far has been credited with helping the company return to profit this year, and former general manager of the game department Hiroki Morite was recently named to become Mixi’s new CEO, leading into what the company is calling a ‘regrowth’ stage.

Mixi has been promoting Monster Strike heavily on television in Japan, and its commercials have resulted in the last million users coming in just 18 days.

Mixi

news

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

news

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. ↩

news

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. ↩

iOS

Mynd: Japan’s latest news app is one of its prettiest

Popular Korean app ‘Noon Date’ launches in Japan

Japan’s Cookpad boasts 20M app downloads, 40M monthly users

Colopl’s ‘Quiz RPG’ notches 23M downloads, ‘Slingshot Braves’ off to fast start

Japan’s Zeppelin brings vibrant filters to your mobile video

Line launches its kids’ movie app on iOS

TV ads march Mixi’s Monster Strike past 5M users

Japan’s Jorte aspires to be a calendar for everyone

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

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