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Singapore’s Intraix partners with Smart Integration on smarter home energy management in Japan

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Singapore-based startup Intraix has just announced a partnership with a Japanese company, Smart Integration, in the hopes of distributing its smart home energy management system to residential homes in Tokyo, Nara, and Okinawa by June of this year. Intraix’s system lets users monitor their energy consumption in a fun and easy way, keeping tabs on their usage via an iOS app or on the web. Through this partnership they aspire to install the system in 5,000 to 8,000 residential homes in its first year, and 14,000 in the following year. The solution includes energy budgeting and consumption prediction features, collecting data via an installed power meter which then sends information to the company’s proprietary data analysis engine, which it has dubbed its “Green Voices algorithm.” Intraix co-founder Darrell Zhang tells me that he has “much faith and confidence in the ability [of Smart Integration] to push the system to the market” in Japan. The Tokyo-based company, headed by CEO and founder Kazumasa Nomura, has established access to important sales channels and smart home system integrators. In fact, the company has already made partnerships with eight local agent companies in Japan to resell and integrate Intraix’s solution. There are already some…

intraix-logo

Singapore-based startup Intraix has just announced a partnership with a Japanese company, Smart Integration, in the hopes of distributing its smart home energy management system to residential homes in Tokyo, Nara, and Okinawa by June of this year. Intraix’s system lets users monitor their energy consumption in a fun and easy way, keeping tabs on their usage via an iOS app or on the web.

Through this partnership they aspire to install the system in 5,000 to 8,000 residential homes in its first year, and 14,000 in the following year. The solution includes energy budgeting and consumption prediction features, collecting data via an installed power meter which then sends information to the company’s proprietary data analysis engine, which it has dubbed its “Green Voices algorithm.”

Intraix co-founder Darrell Zhang tells me that he has “much faith and confidence in the ability [of Smart Integration] to push the system to the market” in Japan. The Tokyo-based company, headed by CEO and founder Kazumasa Nomura, has established access to important sales channels and smart home system integrators. In fact, the company has already made partnerships with eight local agent companies in Japan to resell and integrate Intraix’s solution.

There are already some smart energy competitors in Japan, but Darrell explains that Intraix’s system is different in that it includes a fun social element where its users can accumulate ‘Green Credits’ that can be used for rewards and rebates. There will also be weekly energy challenges as well. He believes that no competing home energy management system has such a rewards system.

Intraix provides smart energy monitor for larger buildings and data centers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Any of our readers who attended the Myojo Waraku event in Fukuoka last year will recognize Intraix as one of the 10 startups who pitched.

You can learn more about Intraix’s residential smart home energy management solution in its promo video below.

Tower defense game ‘Battle Cats’ now rules the Japanese app store

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Battle Cats, the crazy mobile tower defense game from Japanese developer Ponos, has gradually worked its way up to become the top free iOS app in Japan, after its initial release back in November. The title recently upgraded to version 1.2, adding some special sales in-game which have likely helped its recent popularity. (Update: It looks like the game has been knocked to number two by ‘Like Me,’ a new portrait doodle app.) I’ve been a huge fan of this game from the outset, especially its very unusual sense of humor [1]. The variety of strangely named cats and enemies are so much fun, and if you haven’t played it yet I encourage you to check it out. Battle Cats launched on the Android platform at the end of 2012, and isn’t doing too bad on there either. Currently it’s the top ranked casual game on Google Play, and is ranked 13th overall. The game recently surpassed the 2 million downloads milestone, and now that its getting a little exposure in the number one iOS spot, I imagine that 3 million is only a couple of weeks away given its recent momentum. For a closer look at Battle Cats, check…

battle-cats

Battle Cats, the crazy mobile tower defense game from Japanese developer Ponos, has gradually worked its way up to become the top free iOS app in Japan, after its initial release back in November. The title recently upgraded to version 1.2, adding some special sales in-game which have likely helped its recent popularity. (Update: It looks like the game has been knocked to number two by ‘Like Me,’ a new portrait doodle app.)

I’ve been a huge fan of this game from the outset, especially its very unusual sense of humor [1]. The variety of strangely named cats and enemies are so much fun, and if you haven’t played it yet I encourage you to check it out.

Battle Cats launched on the Android platform at the end of 2012, and isn’t doing too bad on there either. Currently it’s the top ranked casual game on Google Play, and is ranked 13th overall.

The game recently surpassed the 2 million downloads milestone, and now that its getting a little exposure in the number one iOS spot, I imagine that 3 million is only a couple of weeks away given its recent momentum.

For a closer look at Battle Cats, check out our recent video demo below:


  1. I should note that I’m still stuff on chapter 3, round 48. If anyone else is in a similar situation, feel free to share your codes here in the comments (Mine is yg2t0).  ↩

Mixi tries again: New photo printing service ‘Nohana’ targets parents in Japan

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Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own. The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app [1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11). Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away. Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with…

nohana_photobook

Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own.

The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app [1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11).

Nohana

Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away.

Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with about 8.6 million of those on smartphones (see interactive chart below). And the most active users on the social network are people in the 20 to 24 demographic accounting for almost 30% of the total users. That’s followed by users ages 25 to 29 at 20%, and 30 to 35 at 14%. Ostensibly many users from these segments should benefit greatly from a service like Nohana.

Mixi currently runs two major business: its social network, plus the online job posting site, Find Job. The company recently shut down its short-lived subscription fashion commerce, Petite Jete, which was targeting young female users. Under what was likely the correct assumption that young female struggled to find casual work fashion, the company did succeed in gaining over a million users. However, the business was not as big as they expected.

In Japan, the photo book market is getting pretty crowded with competitors from Fujifilm and startups like Tolot. Lets stay tuned to see if this new venture, Nohana, will go as they hope — or suffer the same sad fate as Petite Jete.

Download image version of chart


  1. An Android version is coming later this spring  ↩

Dark Summoner: Just another Japanese card battle game? [Video]

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Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US. For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners. I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!) We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of…

Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US.

For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners.

I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!)


  1. We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of Rage of Bahamut about the process of bringing that game to global users. You can read that article in its entirety here.  ↩

  2. My ID is 1459947259. You can share yours in the comments if you like.  ↩

What’s so special about Line? [Video]

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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.

The slick new iPhone app that brings Japanese fashion trends to Asia

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See original story in Japanese Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese. In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture. New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan. The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.

See original story in Japanese

japanstyle

Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese.

In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture.

japan-style-web_chinese

New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan.

The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.

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

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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.

face-stealer-yahoo-japan

Rage of Bahamut and Japan’s quest for global gamers

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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…

rage of bahamut ©Cygames, Inc.

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

©Cygames, Inc.
©Cygames, Inc.

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
appannie.com
Rage of Bahamut on Google Play top grossing charts

  1. More recently, I’ve observed the same with Battle Cats, although this referral code mechanic is by no means unique to these two.  ↩

  2. I’m not sure what AAA means, but you can bet it’s way better than AA.  ↩

Japanese card battle game ‘Dark Summoner’ tops 5 million downloads worldwide

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Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer. According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release. A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give…

dark-summoner 2
AKB48’s Haruna Kojima, for A-Team’s Dark Summoner

Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer.

According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release.

A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give it a short video review once I spend a little more time with it. In the meantime, if you have any tips or advice for the game, feel free to share it in the comments.


  1. See what I did there?  ↩

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

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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,…

poica

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.


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