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:
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). ↩
Softbank (TSE:9984) has announced the continuation of its Tomodachi program for 2013, an initiative to send Japanese high school students from areas most affected by the 2011 earthquake to UC Berkeley for a three-week intensive leadership course. Funded by Softbank and administered by the San Francisco non-profit Ayusa International, the program will see 100 students participate this upcoming summer. Students focus on four areas: housing, business and jobs, public spaces, and energy and sustainability, working with assistants from Japan and UC Berkeley. The idea is that students will take what they learn in this program about civic responsibility and community development, and then apply it at home in order to help their respective communities rebuild. Haruna Shiraiwa, a participating student from last year’s program helped start sight-seeing tours in her hometown of Iwaki, working with travel agency H.I.S., in the hopes of bringing more visitors to the area. Of course it remains to be seen how much of a tangible difference this program can make in rebuilding regions affected by the earthquake. But ostensibly Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, whose own formative years came while studying abroad at UC Berkeley, believes in the potential of such cultural exchanges. For students who…
Softbank (TSE:9984) has announced the continuation of its Tomodachi program for 2013, an initiative to send Japanese high school students from areas most affected by the 2011 earthquake to UC Berkeley for a three-week intensive leadership course.
Funded by Softbank and administered by the San Francisco non-profit Ayusa International, the program will see 100 students participate this upcoming summer. Students focus on four areas: housing, business and jobs, public spaces, and energy and sustainability, working with assistants from Japan and UC Berkeley.
The idea is that students will take what they learn in this program about civic responsibility and community development, and then apply it at home in order to help their respective communities rebuild.
Haruna Shiraiwa, a participating student from last year’s program helped start sight-seeing tours in her hometown of Iwaki, working with travel agency H.I.S., in the hopes of bringing more visitors to the area.
Of course it remains to be seen how much of a tangible difference this program can make in rebuilding regions affected by the earthquake. But ostensibly Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, whose own formative years came while studying abroad at UC Berkeley, believes in the potential of such cultural exchanges.
For students who wish to participate in the 2013 Tomodachi program, applications are being accepted here.
Here’s a great crowdfunding project that’s currently getting some attention in Japan. An initiative from Fujisawa-based ShuR, the SLinto project aspires to be the world’s first crowdsourced dictionary for sign language, with the world’s first sign language keyboard [1]. While it might be easy to look up words in an English, French, or Chinese dictionary [2], for those who use sign language, how would you go about looking up a specific sign? The company describes their solution (pictured above) as follows: Our sign language keyboard makes the whole process much easier. There are four main components for a sign; location, handshape, orientation, and movement. Our special keyboard allows you to look up a sign using its location and handshape and provide search results in videos. This is a remarkable idea not only because it will help people who already use sign language, but also because it will enable people who don’t use sign language to study it more easily. SHuR’s initiative also includes the very lofty goal of creating a crowdsourced dictionary of sign languages [3], with Wikipedia-style additions from users in video form, able to keep up with any new words or jargon that are added to sign languages…
Here’s a great crowdfunding project that’s currently getting some attention in Japan. An initiative from Fujisawa-based ShuR, the SLinto project aspires to be the world’s first crowdsourced dictionary for sign language, with the world’s first sign language keyboard [1].
While it might be easy to look up words in an English, French, or Chinese dictionary [2], for those who use sign language, how would you go about looking up a specific sign? The company describes their solution (pictured above) as follows:
Our sign language keyboard makes the whole process much easier. There are four main components for a sign; location, handshape, orientation, and movement. Our special keyboard allows you to look up a sign using its location and handshape and provide search results in videos.
This is a remarkable idea not only because it will help people who already use sign language, but also because it will enable people who don’t use sign language to study it more easily.
SHuR’s initiative also includes the very lofty goal of creating a crowdsourced dictionary of sign languages [3], with Wikipedia-style additions from users in video form, able to keep up with any new words or jargon that are added to sign languages over time.
Appropriately, ShuR has turned to the power of the crowd to fund its project, calling for financial supporters over on Countdown, targeting 1.5 million yen (just over $16,000) in its 60 day campaign which has just recently begun. If you’d like to throw your support behind this novel idea, credit cards and Paypal payments are accepted.
For more information about this project, check out the TedxTokyo talk below from ShuR co-founder Junto Ohki.
This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too, and this has been just one example.
This project is a cool idea, but I really wish Japanese companies would quit with the weird capitalization in their names… ↩
Ok, ok… It’s not at all easy to look up words in a Chinese dictionary. ↩
‘Sign languages’ is plural because there are 130 varieties in the world currently. ↩
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…
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 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.
Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has just announced that it has surpassed 10 million LTE subscriber milestone. This comes after the company topped the five million subscriber mark back in August of 2012. Docomo initially launched its ‘Xi’ LTE service back in December of 2010, much earlier than its rivals Softbank and KDDI, both of which launched their own LTE services in September of last year respectively. However, according to a recent global LTE report from OpenSignal.com, Docomo’s LTE network lags behind its competitors in terms of speed. Softbank boasts 16.2 Mbps, and KDDI is close behind at 14.8 Mbps — but the report says that Docomo’s speeds were by far the slowest at 5.5 Mbps. Nevertheless, Docomo appears to be collecting customers at a reasonable enough speed, as you can see in our interactive chart below. Download image version of this chart
Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has just announced that it has surpassed 10 million LTE subscriber milestone. This comes after the company topped the five million subscriber mark back in August of 2012.
Docomo initially launched its ‘Xi’ LTE service back in December of 2010, much earlier than its rivals Softbank and KDDI, both of which launched their own LTE services in September of last year respectively.
However, according to a recent global LTE report from OpenSignal.com, Docomo’s LTE network lags behind its competitors in terms of speed. Softbank boasts 16.2 Mbps, and KDDI is close behind at 14.8 Mbps — but the report says that Docomo’s speeds were by far the slowest at 5.5 Mbps.
Nevertheless, Docomo appears to be collecting customers at a reasonable enough speed, as you can see in our interactive chart below.
See the Japanese version of this article It has been a while since I last spoke to the folks from Rovio, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game. But I recently had a chance to catch up with a few members of their flock in Tokyo, as the company gears up to open a new office in the Japanese capital, likely this spring. And while it might make for a more dramatic story to say that the company is making a furious push for Japan, that’s not the case. In fact quite the opposite. They are taking it slow, and that’s how they want it. I would argue that Rovio’s Angry Birds has achieved the kind of pop culture icon status not really seen since the days when Mario Bros revolutionized gaming. But the company realizes that if it wants to permeate uber-cute Japan, which has a culture of firmly established brand icons like Hello Kitty, Anpanman, and yes, Nintendo’s Mario Bros, they need a long term game plan. Peter Vesterbacka, ‘Mighty Eagle’ [1] at Rovio explains: We want to figure out how to build a proper presence that lasts – not just for the next…
Right to left: Peter Vesterbacka, Antti Sonninen, Henri Holm
It has been a while since I last spoke to the folks from Rovio, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game. But I recently had a chance to catch up with a few members of their flock in Tokyo, as the company gears up to open a new office in the Japanese capital, likely this spring. And while it might make for a more dramatic story to say that the company is making a furious push for Japan, that’s not the case. In fact quite the opposite. They are taking it slow, and that’s how they want it.
I would argue that Rovio’s Angry Birds has achieved the kind of pop culture icon status not really seen since the days when Mario Bros revolutionized gaming. But the company realizes that if it wants to permeate uber-cute Japan, which has a culture of firmly established brand icons like Hello Kitty, Anpanman, and yes, Nintendo’s Mario Bros, they need a long term game plan. Peter Vesterbacka, ‘Mighty Eagle’ [1] at Rovio explains:
We want to figure out how to build a proper presence that lasts – not just for the next year or two. We want to be a leading entertainment brand, one that’s more Japanese than many of the Japanese [brands].
But at the same time, they recognize that the business models in Japan leave much room for innovation and disruption. And while the company has been active on the ground in Japan making deals with local partners, they still haven’t really made a significant marketing push in the country. I asked if they’d ever consider television ads in Japan, as that’s a common tactic among the major internet companies here – but Peter says they would likely do something else. Rovio always takes a somewhat different approach in its marketing, he notes, and that’s likely to be the case in Japan as well. Of their existing merchandising partnership with Sanrio, the makers of Hello Kitty, he explains:
It’s always important to have the best possible local partners, because we can learn a lot from them. This was the same reason we wanted to work with LucasArts on Star Wars [2].
I’m told that the downloads that Rovio is seeing from Japan still have a long way to catch up with neighboring Korea, as smartphone penetration still has much room to grow in Japan. This is another reason why playing the long game in the country might be a wise idea, because a all-out marketing push at this time could indeed be premature.
But in the interests of giving locals an idea of what Rovio and Angry Birds are all about, they recently published a sort of Japanese language primer about what Angry Birds is all about (pictured right). Antti Sonninen, Rovio’s country director in Japan, points out that the site launched just a few weeks back. This is actually a common tactic for digital companies bringing a new digital product into Japan. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – all have done similar things. They hope to answer many of the basic questions about Angry Birds here, including profiles of the different birds, as well as an explantion of in-game items.
Meanwhile in nearby China the Angry Birds brand has truly taken flight. I’m told that in a recent survey of 1,000 people that about 94% were familiar with the Angry Birds brand. The company has never been too upset about the IP infringements that usually accompany expansion into China, because it’s only a precipitate of passion for their product. Without going into too many details about their upcoming plans in the country, Peter says with a smile that “there’s a lot going on in China.”
Currently the company has a headcount of about 550 people, with 90 percent of those in Finland. But from what I can tell, the team is very adept at spreading their message, focusing their energies in the right places at the right time. Peter was recently in Russia where Rovio hopes to open activity parks in the next year, as well as push their new Angry Birds branded cola.
Looking at other top mobile games in comparison, there aren’t many that can even come close to what Angry Birds has done in terms of building such a recognizable and iconic brand. It will be interesting to see if this long term strategy works for Rovio, not just in Japan but across the globe.
If I recall correctly, I believe this is the actual title on his name card. Fun stuff. ↩
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
