Here’s a really fun iPhone game from Japan that is created entirely with shadow puppet characters. It’s called Shadow Love, and it’s a side-scrolling platformer where you take on the role of a cute shadow bunny rabbit, just like the type you probably tried to make when you were a kid.
Your task is to navigate to the end of each round, evading other shadow puppet enemies like snails, crabs, porcupines, and even alligators. Even the backgrounds, buttons, and inter-titles are made in this shadow art style, and it gives the game a really nice look, especially with the colored backgrounds.
Shadow Love, which was developed by Japanese game publisher Strawberry Gohan, has been around for almost a year now. But for some reason it hasn’t really gotten much attention, even in its home market of Japan. That’s a shame too, because the gameplay is really smooth, with very easy-to-handle controls.
There are two versions of Shadow Love available: one for $0.99 (for iPhone or iPad, with retina support), which has 30 stages to play through; and there’s also a free version called Shadow Love Free Plus, with five levels to play.
If you’d like like to learn more, check out our demo in the video above.
(Read this article in Japanese) We knew this milestone wasn’t far off after Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa noted at the recent Japan New Economy Summit that the Line chat app had 140 million users worldwide. But apparently it became official yesterday that Line has hit the 150 million users milestone. As you can see in the company’s fun commemorative line graph above [1], Line only hit the 100 million user mark this past January, so they seem to be having their hockey-stick moment right now. With more than 45 million users in its home market of Japan, Line will likely be limited to a growth rate that is only as fast as domestic smartphone growth. So Line will have to keep up its overseas expansion, which to date has been pretty good. We recently had a chance to hear Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa speak about their relatively flexible global strategy, and how he hopes they can operate as a sort of borderless company. Line has even seen some success in China where it briefly became the top social app in the Apple App Store. Currently it’s still in the top 20 for that category. Will Line see the…
We knew this milestone wasn’t far off after Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa noted at the recent Japan New Economy Summit that the Line chat app had 140 million users worldwide. But apparently it became official yesterday that Line has hit the 150 million users milestone.
As you can see in the company’s fun commemorative line graph above [1], Line only hit the 100 million user mark this past January, so they seem to be having their hockey-stick moment right now.
Line Corporations CEO Akira Morikawa
With more than 45 million users in its home market of Japan, Line will likely be limited to a growth rate that is only as fast as domestic smartphone growth. So Line will have to keep up its overseas expansion, which to date has been pretty good. We recently had a chance to hear Line Corporation CEO Akira Morikawa speak about their relatively flexible global strategy, and how he hopes they can operate as a sort of borderless company.
Line has even seen some success in China where it briefly became the top social app in the Apple App Store. Currently it’s still in the top 20 for that category.
There’s also China’s WeChat of course, which has more users than both Line and Kakaotalk combined (about 300 million). But I think overseas growth potential for that app is likely held back by concerns about the made-in-China app which make it a harder sell globally.
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.
I wonder if other types of graphs are permitted in the company… “A bar graph, you say? You’re fired!” ↩
Read our Japanese article on Zaim’s new web interface 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. 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…
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.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
Japanese mobile giant 
