Japanese fashion conglomerate Uniqlo, which has over 940 stores worldwide, announced that its mobile ‘members’ have surpassed 10 million. Now the company is launching a community website where they hope to gather product feedback and reviews from consumers. Uniqlo also plans to open an official account on the popular chat app Line on June 18th.
Of many apps in Uniqlo’s repertoire (like Uniqlo Wake Up and UT Camera) the one that the company puts special attention on is the main Uniqlo app. Within this application, users can access all other apps from the company, check out the latest catalogue, access the online store, search for offline shops, and receive exclusive coupons. Uniqlo will be adding a series of features to the app starting in June, including a barcode scanner that can be used at stores to see product details.
The company plans to leverage feedback from its newly launched social website, where the collected information will be used for further product development.
Speaking of making use of customer feedback, Muji has been doing this sort of thing for some time now with its Cuusso Muji website (which closed in March of 2010) and Kurashi no Ryohin Kenkyujyo (roughly meaning ‘daily life research department’). Currently, Muji seems to only take product development ideas through a web form, but the Cuusso system was interesting in that anyone was able to suggest an idea and ones with over 1,000 votes were put into the product development process.
Uniqlo has long been known for its digital creativity, so it will be interesting to see how it is going to implement new initiatives into its business and branding.
This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space. We’ve looked at quite a few cute Japanese apps recently, but it’s hard to get any cuter than a deco-pic app for sharing pictures of babies. CyberAgent’s BabyDays app is exactly that, delivering a ‘kawaii’ overload in both presentation and content. Like most photo decoration apps these days, BabyDays comes with an assortment of frames, decorative texts and stickers. You can like pictures submitted by other users, voting them up if they are especially cute. This is a pretty smart feature, letting parents enjoy the feeling if having scores of people complement their baby all at once [1]. BabyDays also has heavy social integration, with Ameba authentication and the ability to share your pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Mixi if you choose. You also have the option of viewing your photos in a calendar presentation as well. While the app has been around since late last year, it surged to become Japan’s top iOS photo app back on May 24th after a new version was released. Currently there is a promotion ongoing that gave the app a kick…
This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.
We’ve looked at quite a few cute Japanese apps recently, but it’s hard to get any cuter than a deco-pic app for sharing pictures of babies. CyberAgent’s BabyDays app is exactly that, delivering a ‘kawaii’ overload in both presentation and content.
Like most photo decoration apps these days, BabyDays comes with an assortment of frames, decorative texts and stickers. You can like pictures submitted by other users, voting them up if they are especially cute. This is a pretty smart feature, letting parents enjoy the feeling if having scores of people complement their baby all at once [1]. BabyDays also has heavy social integration, with Ameba authentication and the ability to share your pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Mixi if you choose. You also have the option of viewing your photos in a calendar presentation as well.
While the app has been around since late last year, it surged to become Japan’s top iOS photo app back on May 24th after a new version was released. Currently there is a promotion ongoing that gave the app a kick start too, whereby if users decorate their baby pics with special Miki House frames, the have a chance to have their baby become a model for the famous baby brand. This promotion extends to the BabyDays Facebook page, where one baby’s picture will be featured each day.
In addition to CyberAgent’s popular Ameba Pigg virtual world, the company has produced a number of very ‘cute’ apps in the past, including its Decolink chat app, and just recently Girls Pic Plus. We think this is a pretty smart space to be in these days, and they should probably consider offering BabyDays in traditional Chinese for Greater China, and then maybe in English too.
If you’d like to try the app out for yourself, you can pick it up over on the App Store or on Google Play. Or if you’re in the market for other fun baby apps, check out another Japan-made product, Kiddy, or my own personal favorite, Notabli.
Many Japanese people commute to work by train. This is the core time when they use their mobile phones. Due to extended use on trains like this, people often run down their battery, resulting a big need for portable mobile phone chargers. One popular charging device is the Cheero Power Plus Danboard version. The product has proven very popular, and is currently sold out. But it will be available again in mid-June 1. ‘Danboard’ means ‘cardboard’ in Japanese, and this particular danboard is a character that appears in a famous manga called Yotsuba&! named Danbo. This manga started 10 years ago in 2003 and so far has sold 10 million books. Readers may be familiar with Yotsuba&! since it has been translated into 13 different languages and sold in 23 countries. So Japanese or even non-Japanese manga fans may be familiar with the cute looking cardboard character. The Cheero mobile charger can recharge an iPhone 5 (or any other mobile phone) up to five times, and it takes about 11 to 13 hours for a full charge. It comes with a 75 cm micro USB cable and a linen bag. There are features to prevent overcharge and discharge, and there…
Many Japanese people commute to work by train. This is the core time when they use their mobile phones. Due to extended use on trains like this, people often run down their battery, resulting a big need for portable mobile phone chargers. One popular charging device is the Cheero Power Plus Danboard version. The product has proven very popular, and is currently sold out. But it will be available again in mid-June 1.
‘Danboard’ means ‘cardboard’ in Japanese, and this particular danboard is a character that appears in a famous manga called Yotsuba&! named Danbo. This manga started 10 years ago in 2003 and so far has sold 10 million books. Readers may be familiar with Yotsuba&! since it has been translated into 13 different languages and sold in 23 countries. So Japanese or even non-Japanese manga fans may be familiar with the cute looking cardboard character.
The Cheero mobile charger can recharge an iPhone 5 (or any other mobile phone) up to five times, and it takes about 11 to 13 hours for a full charge. It comes with a 75 cm micro USB cable and a linen bag. There are features to prevent overcharge and discharge, and there is also an automatic stop feature when temperature gets too high. There are two sockets, allowing users to charge tablets and some game consoles as well.
The Cheero Power Plus Danboard version is 3,750 yen (or about $37). But as previously mentioned, it is already sold out on Amazon. Such a mobile charger is good for everyday use, but it is also useful during earthquake or other natural disasters. Yostuba, the company behind the product has also released an Amazon branded version of its character Danbo in cooperation with an anime figure manufacturer Kaiyodo.
It seems that the product’s pre-order has ended already.↩
It was just back in April that Line announced it was venturing into the mobile e-book industry with its Line Manga service. Now the company is digging even deeper into the publishing industry, adding ‘Line Novel’ to its repertoire starting on June 4th. What’s interesting about Line Novel is that all publications on the platform will be written by well known authors, exclusively for this platform. These exclusive novels are to be provided for free. Updates about the new releases will be shared on the Line Novel official account @linenovel. To make this initiative, Line partnered with major Japanese publishing house Kodansha, a familiar face for Line from their partnership with Line Manga. Line users can enjoy the electronic publications of their choice by adding the official account of particular novel to their friend list. Two to three episodes of each novel will be delivered weekly. To celebrate the beginning of this service, the company will launch a contest to discover new authors. The winner of the contest will be decided by public voting from Line users. All novels must be previously unpublished, and applications are open until August 15th. Japanese people are accustomed to mobile novels, or ‘keitai shosetsu’…
It was just back in April that Line announced it was venturing into the mobile e-book industry with its Line Manga service. Now the company is digging even deeper into the publishing industry, adding ‘Line Novel’ to its repertoire starting on June 4th.
What’s interesting about Line Novel is that all publications on the platform will be written by well known authors, exclusively for this platform. These exclusive novels are to be provided for free. Updates about the new releases will be shared on the Line Novel official account @linenovel.
To make this initiative, Line partnered with major Japanese publishing house Kodansha, a familiar face for Line from their partnership with Line Manga. Line users can enjoy the electronic publications of their choice by adding the official account of particular novel to their friend list. Two to three episodes of each novel will be delivered weekly.
To celebrate the beginning of this service, the company will launch a contest to discover new authors. The winner of the contest will be decided by public voting from Line users. All novels must be previously unpublished, and applications are open until August 15th.
Japanese people are accustomed to mobile novels, or ‘keitai shosetsu’ since the days of feature phones which goes way back to year 2006. So in a way, this is a return to an already proven concept, likely an initiative that will be successful for Line.
For more information on the growth of Line and its vast repertoire of apps, including Line Novel, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
Mobile video has always been a somewhat perilous space for startups. I was a big fan of Seesmic back in 2008, which at the time proposed a sort of video equivalent of Twitter, with the capability of publishing short videos to a public timeline. Of course that service fizzled. But it looks like times have changed, with Twitter’s own video offering Vine racking up 13 million users in its first four months. One young startup hopes that there’s room for a mobile video messaging service too, and their app Unda is about to be released on the app store soon. But perhaps more interesting than the challenge that lies ahead of them is the story of how they got to where they are now. The startup was created by two Mexican and Japanese co-founders, a unique international collaboration that has led to Silicon Valley where they are now part of the 500 Startups incubation program. Oscar Yasser Noriega (from Mexico) and Nao Tokui (from Japan) originally met in Japan a few years ago. Eventually they decided that they wanted to do something together. Oscar had previously worked on a top Latin American video game site, but he liked the process…
L to R: Luis Lopez, Oscar Yasser Noriega, Nao Tokui
Mobile video has always been a somewhat perilous space for startups. I was a big fan of Seesmic back in 2008, which at the time proposed a sort of video equivalent of Twitter, with the capability of publishing short videos to a public timeline. Of course that service fizzled. But it looks like times have changed, with Twitter’s own video offering Vine racking up 13 million users in its first four months.
One young startup hopes that there’s room for a mobile video messaging service too, and their app Unda is about to be released on the app store soon. But perhaps more interesting than the challenge that lies ahead of them is the story of how they got to where they are now. The startup was created by two Mexican and Japanese co-founders, a unique international collaboration that has led to Silicon Valley where they are now part of the 500 Startups incubation program.
Oscar Yasser Noriega (from Mexico) and Nao Tokui (from Japan) originally met in Japan a few years ago. Eventually they decided that they wanted to do something together. Oscar had previously worked on a top Latin American video game site, but he liked the process of incubating new ideas within the company. Nao had been the founder of Qosmo, a mobile development company doing apps for big clients. Oscar proposed the idea of doing a video messaging app, but Nao was a little bit hesitant at first. Was there really room for this kind of product, especially as so many video startups had already failed so hard?
Taking the plunge
Eventually Nao came around to the idea. And when he did, he jumped in head first. He wanted to to meet up with Oscar, who was at that time in Mexico — so he flew straight over, and within two weeks had a prototype going. That was in December. And that’s when they thought that they might really be on to something.
After some interest from investors, the company’s third member and current chief creative officer, Luis Lopez, suggested that they should explore some more options. They took their idea to 500 Startups’ Mexico branch, and venture partner Cesar Salazar liked it a lot. Coincidentally 500 Startup’s founding partner Dave McClure had a talk in Mexico around that time, so they pitched the idea to him as well, and he loved it too. That was on a Wednesday, says Oscar, and they were on Silicon Valley by the following Monday. That was a little later than the most recent batch of startups, but great step forward for the young company.
As for the product itself, I personally have yet to see it. But from what I’ve heard, I’m optimistic. I’m told the UX/UI breaks with tradition, with no text, emoticons, or stickers — just video. They have focused on making the experience a good one even on slow networks. So of course while they plan to push this app in mature Asian mobile markets like Japan or Singapore, they will also target emerging markets in the region, as well as in Latin America — leveraging the advantage of having founders from both regions.
And hopefully unlike the video startup failures we’ve seen in the past, maybe the time is right for a service like Unda. Oscar explains:
Back around 2008 the timing was not right. Phones were fast, but not fast enough for a seamless experience. Networks weren’t so fast either, and there were less phones with front facing cameras. The timing was tricky for services back then. But now there are great examples of mobile video booming – not just things like YouTube and NicoNico Douga, but shorter format services like Vine, which is just six second videos. That’s a great signal that the market is embracing this right now.
So how will the market respond to Unda? It’s hard to say without seeing it first, but my initial impressions are that this is a pretty strong team, so I don’t think anyone should underestimate them. They did after all, make the cut for 500 Startups, a good indication that they’re on to something promising.
Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so. PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish. By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings. There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue…
Recently I wrote a little about my favorite mobile writing apps, one of which was Poster, a beautifully designed iOS app that interfaces quite nicely with WordPress blogs. But there’s a similar app made here in Japan that almost made my list. PressSync Pro, while not as pretty as Poster is every bit as powerful, maybe more so.
PressSync lets you do practically everything you can normally do with WordPress, with menu items to browse published articles, drafts, local articles, and media/images [1]. You can even edit things like the URL slug, the post’s featured image, and custom fields. PressSync does not access your entire archive of articles, but just the most recent ones. But you can adjust the setting to increase or decrease how many posts deep you’d like to dig into your archive if you wish.
By default the font size in the PressSync editor is a little small, so you might want to bump it up a notch – and you can do so in the settings.
There is snippet support for common HTML tags, and even Markdown. While this is handy, to me it requires a few to many button presses, and I will likely continue to compose in another app, and maybe use an app like this one to publish. PressSync also has an AppLink maker function for bloggers who need to create affiliate links.
Overall I think it’s a pretty great app, and for anyone who needs to interface with WordPress on a mobile, its certainly worth the 450 yen ($4.99) price tag. You can get it over on the App Store.
I do have one complaint about tag input, which presents tag selection by listing all your tags (which can tag a while if you have many) with on/off sliders. Tags would be better input by simple writing them out separated by commas , I think. ↩
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Rick Martin
