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Japan’s Slide Movies launches Android app, looking to reach more global users

Junya Mori Junya Mori
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based mobile app developer Nagisa introduced an Android version of its movie app Slide Movies today.[1] The app allows you to create a movie by only choosing several still images. It can focus on a face in every frame using the face recognition technology on smartphones, in addition to providing a ‘realistic feel’ by inserting animated frames in the movie. Since its launch back in December, an iOS version of the app has surpassed 1.7 million downloads. According to Nagisa’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama, they have developed the Android version in response to a high demand from users. He told us that they have received over 10,000 pre-registrations for the Android version on their teaser site. Some of our readers may recall that the company was offering a promotion campaign in partnership with Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, which gave you reward coupons when you created a movie clip using their TV commercial song and uploaded it to the service. Since receiving proposals from many companies, they are planning to offer the next marketing promotion of this type in July. While most of their users are Japan-based for now, they will start global expansion to coincide…

slidemovies_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based mobile app developer Nagisa introduced an Android version of its movie app Slide Movies today.[1] The app allows you to create a movie by only choosing several still images. It can focus on a face in every frame using the face recognition technology on smartphones, in addition to providing a ‘realistic feel’ by inserting animated frames in the movie.

Since its launch back in December, an iOS version of the app has surpassed 1.7 million downloads. According to Nagisa’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama, they have developed the Android version in response to a high demand from users. He told us that they have received over 10,000 pre-registrations for the Android version on their teaser site.

Some of our readers may recall that the company was offering a promotion campaign in partnership with Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, which gave you reward coupons when you created a movie clip using their TV commercial song and uploaded it to the service. Since receiving proposals from many companies, they are planning to offer the next marketing promotion of this type in July.

While most of their users are Japan-based for now, they will start global expansion to coincide with the launch of the Android version. In addition to users from Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Taiwan, they’ve seen a gradual increase in downloads from Brazil, so they will also begin targeting the Latin American region from now on.

CEO Yokoyama explained how they will evolve the market from here:

We’re planning to add a new feature to the iOS version of the Slide Movies app soon, which allows you to splice a movie clip with other clips. We’ll introduce a series of movie creation apps intended for several different usages rather than putting many features in one app.

They are targeting 5 million downloads with the both iOS and Android versions by the end of 2014.

Our regular readers may recall that Tokyo-based mobile developer Donuts invested about $1 million in Nagisa last month.

  1. Not to confuse this with Slide Story. ↩

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Japanese mobile game giant Donuts invests in app developer Nagisa

Takeshi Hirano Takeshi Hirano
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Donuts, a mobile game developer and the creator of the video app MixChannel, announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Nagisa. Details of this investment were not disclosed but it appears to be worth about $1 million according to Nagisa’s corporate profile and past funding history. Launched back in 2010, Nagisa operates a messaging app called Balloon, and previously raised 100 million (or about $1 million) from Nissay Capital. Subsequently, they also produced the photo effects app Kame Camera, the diary app Livre, and a virtual idol app The 49th Girl — all of which have surpassed five million downloads cumulatively. The company also tells us that their movie app Slide Movies has acquired over 700,000 downloads in the two months since its launch back in December, and its monthly downloads surpassed 1 million in April alone. The company’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama told us that they are planning to expand their business to other sectors including C2C (consumer-to-consumer), fashion e-commerce, and games, thus making the most of their rapidly growing user base. As an investor, Donuts is interested in that user base, and is exploring synergy around Donut’s hit movie…

donuts-on-glass

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Donuts, a mobile game developer and the creator of the video app MixChannel, announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Nagisa. Details of this investment were not disclosed but it appears to be worth about $1 million according to Nagisa’s corporate profile and past funding history.

slidemovies_screenshot
Slide Movies

Launched back in 2010, Nagisa operates a messaging app called Balloon, and previously raised 100 million (or about $1 million) from Nissay Capital. Subsequently, they also produced the photo effects app Kame Camera, the diary app Livre, and a virtual idol app The 49th Girl — all of which have surpassed five million downloads cumulatively.

The company also tells us that their movie app Slide Movies has acquired over 700,000 downloads in the two months since its launch back in December, and its monthly downloads surpassed 1 million in April alone. The company’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama told us that they are planning to expand their business to other sectors including C2C (consumer-to-consumer), fashion e-commerce, and games, thus making the most of their rapidly growing user base.

As an investor, Donuts is interested in that user base, and is exploring synergy around Donut’s hit movie app MixChannel through this investment.

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‘Kame Camera’ takes Japanese schoolgirl Dragon Ball meme a step further

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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About a month ago, an internet meme called Makankosappo (literally translated as “Magic Penetrating Killing Ray”) spread around the world pretty fast. It all began when Japanese schoolgirls were photographing themselves as if they were hit by a special attack from Dragon Ball. And from there it took off, even spawning a ‘Quidditching‘ spin-off. But Tokyo startup Nagisa, which is well known for having developed the Balloon messaging app, has taken the meme one step further. The company recently introduced a photo effects app that allows users to easily create pictures with that sort of effects. It’s called Kame Camera and today it became the top ranked application in the free photo & video category on the Japanese App Store, also reaching the 20th position overall. The app is available in both English and Japanese, and can be downloaded for iOS and Android platforms. It has multiple photo effects including Kamehameha (from Dragon Ball), Hadoken (from Street Fighter), and the Force (Star Wars) as well. In their announcement, the startup noted that it aspires to create more apps to bring fun Japanese culture to the world. If you don’t want to miss out on the fun, now is the time…

kamecamera

About a month ago, an internet meme called Makankosappo (literally translated as “Magic Penetrating Killing Ray”) spread around the world pretty fast. It all began when Japanese schoolgirls were photographing themselves as if they were hit by a special attack from Dragon Ball. And from there it took off, even spawning a ‘Quidditching‘ spin-off.

But Tokyo startup Nagisa, which is well known for having developed the Balloon messaging app, has taken the meme one step further. The company recently introduced a photo effects app that allows users to easily create pictures with that sort of effects. It’s called Kame Camera and today it became the top ranked application in the free photo & video category on the Japanese App Store, also reaching the 20th position overall.

The app is available in both English and Japanese, and can be downloaded for iOS and Android platforms. It has multiple photo effects including Kamehameha (from Dragon Ball), Hadoken (from Street Fighter), and the Force (Star Wars) as well. In their announcement, the startup noted that it aspires to create more apps to bring fun Japanese culture to the world. If you don’t want to miss out on the fun, now is the time to give it a try.

Of course, Japan has no shortage of other great photo apps if you’d like to check out some more. Regrettably, they aren’t all quite as much fun as Kame Camera!

kamecamera_screenshot2
kamecamera_screenshot

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