Last week we mentioned that Japanese personal finance application Zaim had added OCR to its repertoire, allowing users to quickly scan receipts with their smartphone camera. And today that function has been added to the Zaim Android app as well.
Today but my colleague Junya also noticed today that the web version of the Zaim service has finally dropped, with a pretty gorgeous interface. The main page gives you a general overview of your spending, showing totals for the current month, week, and day. There’s also a slick category breakdown of expenditures, plus a list of recent purchases in the sidebar. And while most people will use the smartphone apps for inputing purchases, the web version now also allows for purchase input as well.
Zaim web version, calendar view
There is also a ‘history’ tab where you can get an more extensive look at recent purchases, as well as a ‘totals’ tab where you can view graphical and tabular summaries of spending.
Currently this web version is only available in Japanese, although I would hope that like their apps that it becomes available in English later as well.
There is no shortage of finance management options in Japan. We also recently featured Moneytree, another handy app that helps you track your expenditures by importing bank and credit card billing updates.
Japanese companies have been very good at monetizing the mobile space, most notably gaming companies. But there’s one sector that you would likely not expect would be easy to monetize, and that’s weather information. But a company in Japan called Weathernews has done pretty well for itself in this area. The company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange way back in 2003 (TSE:4825) and with offices in 27 major cities in 13 countries, it claims to be the world’s largest private weather service company. The company has done well with its Weathernews Touch smartphone application, as well as its web and feature phone services. Now it’s looking to make a global push of its Weathernews Touch app, with an English version coming in the next few months. I recently had a chance to speak with the company’s director Tomohiro Ishibashi and representative Ryosuke Ueyama to find out more about their services. Tomohiro explained that weather data by itself is freely available and they don’t believe they can make money from just data alone. What they intend to do is to make a weather communication community, something more personal and customized. They see this as a new market in the weather…
Weathernews’ forecast center, Chiba, Japan
Japanese companies have been very good at monetizing the mobile space, most notably gaming companies. But there’s one sector that you would likely not expect would be easy to monetize, and that’s weather information. But a company in Japan called Weathernews has done pretty well for itself in this area. The company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange way back in 2003 (TSE:4825) and with offices in 27 major cities in 13 countries, it claims to be the world’s largest private weather service company.
The company has done well with its Weathernews Touch smartphone application, as well as its web and feature phone services. Now it’s looking to make a global push of its Weathernews Touch app, with an English version coming in the next few months. I recently had a chance to speak with the company’s director Tomohiro Ishibashi and representative Ryosuke Ueyama to find out more about their services.
Tomohiro explained that weather data by itself is freely available and they don’t believe they can make money from just data alone. What they intend to do is to make a weather communication community, something more personal and customized. They see this as a new market in the weather information space.
User photo submissions in your area give a great overview of the weather nearby
Typically online weather services depend on high traffic and companies monetize that traffic via advertising. WeatherNews doesn’t put ads on their site and with the exception of the occasional banner to promote or explain their services, and they hope to keep it that way. Weather is very connected to our daily lives, they say, and with such critical information they don’t believe they should use ads. Advertisers could want to influence the content and they think weather information should remain free.
So far they have about 20 million unique monthly users across PC and feature phones and most of those don’t pay. But about 5% of those are willing to pay, I’m told. Their smartphone apps have seen about 8 million unique downloads in total, with about 4 million apiece for iOS and Android. The company benefits from being on AU Smart Pass, which led to some good exposure.
The WeatherNews Touch application monetizes with premium services where customers can pay for more accurate or more detailed weather information. This could include some alerts, or the opportunity to communicate in a deeper way with other subscribers (free users cannot do this, I’m told). This does come with some problems however because while Android does allow for automatically renewed subscriptions, iOS doesn’t. So in Japan they sell tickets for seven-day or 30-day periods, and sometimes more.
Will global users pay?
But given that Japanese users are so accustomed to paying for mobile services, I’m curious as to whether global users will do the same so readily. Tomohiro says that before i-mode Japanese users didn’t pay for mobile services in this way, and people didn’t believe in such a market. He hopes that they can get US users to pay for weather information in a similar way, essentially creating a market in the same way that one was created in Japan.
The company is also doing well in China, and has a good relationship with the nation’s leading carrier China Mobile. They have obtained a license in China as a weather provider and has done some testing for the Android market. Their feature phone site in China is doing about as well as their site with NTT Docomo in Japan. While sites like these are branded for the carriers, all information comes from WeatherNews.
Weather services and applications often fall under our radar, and I say that as both a consumer and as someone who regularly writes about new internet services. But at the same time, I do have a couple of paid weather apps on my own mobile (Morning Rain and Solar), so I can’t really argue that there’s not a market for weather services. I expect Weathernews Touch will benefit from good visibility in any market, as long as there are dedicated ‘weather’ categories in app stores.
Stay tuned in the next few months to see how the company progresses.
Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo and medical information provider Nihon Ultmarc have jointly announced that the telco would acquire a 77.5% stake of the medical company for 2.6 billion yen (approximately $26 million) in May. Nihon Ultmarc was founded in 1962, and has built a database of medical doctors and nurses across the country, providing that information to the pharmaceutical industry. NTT Docomo announced in their business plan for this fiscal year that it expects to grow its medical and health care related business up to 40 billion yen ($400 million) by 2015, which is almost ten times than what it was in 2011. The telco aims to create three new markets by deploying mobile technologies: in health management and prevention support, in health insurance and welfare related services, and medical examination and treatment support. NTT Docomo had been operating a video service, MD+, for sharing surgical procedures and treatments among doctors. Along with the subsidization, Nihon Ulmarc has integrated with MD+ with the company’s knowledge sharing system for members/doctors, giving them an accumulation of useful intelligence that can go towards better medical services.
Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo and medical information provider Nihon Ultmarc have jointly announced that the telco would acquire a 77.5% stake of the medical company for 2.6 billion yen (approximately $26 million) in May.
Nihon Ultmarc was founded in 1962, and has built a database of medical doctors and nurses across the country, providing that information to the pharmaceutical industry. NTT Docomo announced in their business plan for this fiscal year that it expects to grow its medical and health care related business up to 40 billion yen ($400 million) by 2015, which is almost ten times than what it was in 2011. The telco aims to create three new markets by deploying mobile technologies: in health management and prevention support, in health insurance and welfare related services, and medical examination and treatment support.
NTT Docomo had been operating a video service, MD+, for sharing surgical procedures and treatments among doctors. Along with the subsidization, Nihon Ulmarc has integrated with MD+ with the company’s knowledge sharing system for members/doctors, giving them an accumulation of useful intelligence that can go towards better medical services.
Japan’s hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed the 13 million downloads milestone as of yesterday, just 19 days after it passed the 12 million mark. This continues its previous pace of about a million downloads every three weeks or so, a trajectory the game has had since last November. The timing is fortuitous as Gung Ho Entertainment (3765:JASDAQ) held a fan event today at the Tokyo Dome. During the event, it was announced that there would be a Puzzle & Dragons x Evangelion collaboration coming at the end of May [1]. From my own point of view, the best metric of how well P&D is doing is whether or not I’m still playing it. And I’m still coming back to play it on close to a daily basis. The game has managed to hit a sweet spot between very, very casual, but yet still very engaging with a lot of depth. It’s hard to put down, but yet, at the same time, it isn’t — just close the app at any time during gameplay, and pick it up again whenever you’re ready. If you have yet to try the game, check out our video introduction to Puzzle &…
Japan’s hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons has surpassed the 13 million downloads milestone as of yesterday, just 19 days after it passed the 12 million mark. This continues its previous pace of about a million downloads every three weeks or so, a trajectory the game has had since last November.
The timing is fortuitous as Gung Ho Entertainment (3765:JASDAQ) held a fan event today at the Tokyo Dome. During the event, it was announced that there would be a Puzzle & Dragons x Evangelion collaboration coming at the end of May [1].
From my own point of view, the best metric of how well P&D is doing is whether or not I’m still playing it. And I’m still coming back to play it on close to a daily basis. The game has managed to hit a sweet spot between very, very casual, but yet still very engaging with a lot of depth. It’s hard to put down, but yet, at the same time, it isn’t — just close the app at any time during gameplay, and pick it up again whenever you’re ready.
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…
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!
Many Japanese traditional-style inns, or ‘ryokan’, are known for their fine hospitality. And with the goal of helping you find the best ones, Relux, a high-class ryokan discovery service launched in beta back in February. It’s an initiative from Tokyo-based startup Loco Partners, who have so far secured 60 million yen (about $615,000) in funding from CyberAgent Ventures and Recruit Incubation Partners. There are existing websites that allows users to find and reserve different accomodations such as Jyaran or Rakuten Travel. And there are others that are geared more towards high-class hotels like Ikkyu. So what makes Relux different? Relux, whose name is a portmanteau of ‘relax’ and ‘luxury’, differentiates itself in three major ways: First, it is strictly a members-only service, with users in their 30s to 40s, many being doctors, lawyers, and top executives. Users apply for the membership using their Facebook credentials, when the site seems to extract information such as your college and career experiences from Facebook. The membership acceptance rate is somewhere around 20%. Another differentiator is that Relux guarantees the best rate for all offers they make on the site (in comparison to competitors). Relux also claims satisfation guaranteed (i.e. money back for dissatisfied customers)…
Many Japanese traditional-style inns, or ‘ryokan’, are known for their fine hospitality. And with the goal of helping you find the best ones, Relux, a high-class ryokan discovery service launched in beta back in February. It’s an initiative from Tokyo-based startup Loco Partners, who have so far secured 60 million yen (about $615,000) in funding from CyberAgent Ventures and Recruit Incubation Partners.
There are existing websites that allows users to find and reserve different accomodations such as Jyaran or Rakuten Travel. And there are others that are geared more towards high-class hotels like Ikkyu. So what makes Relux different?
Relux, whose name is a portmanteau of ‘relax’ and ‘luxury’, differentiates itself in three major ways:
First, it is strictly a members-only service, with users in their 30s to 40s, many being doctors, lawyers, and top executives. Users apply for the membership using their Facebook credentials, when the site seems to extract information such as your college and career experiences from Facebook. The membership acceptance rate is somewhere around 20%.
Another differentiator is that Relux guarantees the best rate for all offers they make on the site (in comparison to competitors).
Relux also claims satisfation guaranteed (i.e. money back for dissatisfied customers) and they say they are the first in the travel industry to have such a policy.
I had a chance to talk to the founder of Relux, Takaya Shinozuka, who elaborated on how the system works.
Our staff negotiates with ryokan to create exclusive travel plans for Relux. The average rate per person per night is 40,000 yen including dinner and breakfast. Our plans start from a minimum of 30,000 yen to 100,000 yen at the high end. What distiguishes Relux from other luxury travel discovery sites is that only we provide ‘high-satisfaction’ ryokan instead of just high-class ryokan.
The review of hotels takes into account recommendations by executives who use such accomodations more than 100 times a year, as well as thorough research of online and offline reviews, and actual usage or a visit by a Relux representative.
Only two months after its launch, the site is focused on gaining more members and increasing the number of ryokan available on the site. Relux hopes to introduce around 200 ryokans per year. Shinozuka adds:
It is amazing how many wonderful ryokans there are not just in Tokyo but all over Japan. It is our mission to spread the word about such culture first to the Japanese people but hopefully to the world in the near future. To that end, we will definitely release an English version of Relux at some point.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Japanese mobile giant 
Yukari Mitsuhashi
