Two Japanese mobile trends that we have been following closely over the past few months are high-quality Japanese photo apps, and the evolution of cute culture into an exportable mobile commodity. Popular made-in-Japan collage app Papelook lies at the intersection of these two trends, and that means it has lots of potential to grow, even beyond Japan’s borders.
Today Digital Garage announced that it would be investing in Papelook, though the exact sum was not disclosed, the company will take 5% of the startup’s outstanding shares.
The announcement also noted that Papelook has surpassed the 6 million downloads milestone (see chart below), boasting that among teenage girl iPhone users in Japan (specifically, those aged 10 to 20) it’s estimated that one in every two have downloaded Papelook.
Papelook’s journey to 6 million downloads
But the app has proven popular in overseas markets, currently ranking as a top 25 iOS photo app in South Korea, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia. On Android, It’s performing well in South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
Papelook is an Open Network Lab startup, and our readers may recall that it took the top prize at the accelerator’s Demo Day back in May. The parent company of ONL is Digital Garage.
For those not familiar with Papelook, check out our demo video below from a few months back.
Yesterscape is sort of a time-machine app developed by Kyoto-based startup QOOQ. As the app name suggests, Yesterscape allows users to save and leave photos to specific locations. For example, you can leave an archive of family photos of your during an annual trip, and then enjoy them the next time you visit the location. Users can sign up for Yesterscape using Facebook or Google credentials. The app uses your mobile phone’s GPS, accelerometer and gyro sensor to obtain location data, as well as the angle or tilt of a photo. All of this information is saved with the photo in the cloud along with a time stamp. By holding your mobile phone to a given location, the app overlays photos from your past with the current scene. Displayed photos can be filtered by time or distance. There is a private share setting for photos too, so that you can share photos exclusively with family members, friends, or significant others. These photos can be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, giving users a way notify friends of their post. You can check out how the app works in the video below. Yesterscape is available on iOS as…
Yesterscape is sort of a time-machine app developed by Kyoto-based startup QOOQ. As the app name suggests, Yesterscape allows users to save and leave photos to specific locations. For example, you can leave an archive of family photos of your during an annual trip, and then enjoy them the next time you visit the location.
Users can sign up for Yesterscape using Facebook or Google credentials. The app uses your mobile phone’s GPS, accelerometer and gyro sensor to obtain location data, as well as the angle or tilt of a photo. All of this information is saved with the photo in the cloud along with a time stamp. By holding your mobile phone to a given location, the app overlays photos from your past with the current scene.
Displayed photos can be filtered by time or distance. There is a private share setting for photos too, so that you can share photos exclusively with family members, friends, or significant others. These photos can be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, giving users a way notify friends of their post.
You can check out how the app works in the video below. Yesterscape is available on iOS as a free download.
Photo apps are extremely popular in Japan. And there are many photo-related services that provide unique experiences. One such service, Bokete, was launched as a website back in 2008, a place where users can make humorous captions about different photos. There have been over eight million ‘boke’ (‘boke’ roughly means ‘jokes’ in Japanese) uploaded up until now 1. Bokete has also released smartphone apps for both Android and iOS, and the total number of downloads so far is a solid 1.8 million. On Bokete, users can view images and their corresponding jokes by criteria like popularity, most recent, and ‘hand-picked’. There are many images of animals/pets, celebrities, movies, and even quotes. On the app, users can also post their own funny captions from the series of photos and images available. These photos are user-generated as well. The company behind Bokete is Omoroki in Shizuoka prefecture. They recently announced a content partnership with Yahoo called Bokete Select. Bokete Select will feature photos and jokes, but it’s limited to images with a Creative Commons attribution licence from Flickr. The ‘boke’ content will be featured on Yahoo Japan’s mobile apps for (iOS and Android). Bokete have been used in interesting brand promotions, such…
Photo apps are extremely popular in Japan. And there are many photo-related services that provide unique experiences. One such service, Bokete, was launched as a website back in 2008, a place where users can make humorous captions about different photos.
There have been over eight million ‘boke’ (‘boke’ roughly means ‘jokes’ in Japanese) uploaded up until now 1. Bokete has also released smartphone apps for both Android and iOS, and the total number of downloads so far is a solid 1.8 million.
On Bokete, users can view images and their corresponding jokes by criteria like popularity, most recent, and ‘hand-picked’. There are many images of animals/pets, celebrities, movies, and even quotes. On the app, users can also post their own funny captions from the series of photos and images available. These photos are user-generated as well.
The company behind Bokete is Omoroki in Shizuoka prefecture. They recently announced a content partnership with Yahoo called Bokete Select. Bokete Select will feature photos and jokes, but it’s limited to images with a Creative Commons attribution licence from Flickr. The ‘boke’ content will be featured on Yahoo Japan’s mobile apps for (iOS and Android).
Bokete have been used in interesting brand promotions, such as for the G.I. Joe movie which recently hit theatres in Japan. The movie stills were provided by the film, and users then unleashed their snarky comments. The award-winning jokes can be seen over on the Bokete blog.
If you encounter a fun boke, it can be shared with friends on Twitter, Facebook, and Line. The images and jokes shared on the site are generally a sort of Japanese black humor, so many of them could be difficult for non-Japanese readers to understand. But give it a try!
Here are a few examples of boke below.
This mushroom says, “I’m a bit cold.”
Santa says, “God damn it, why didn’t you deactivate the security!”
“It was this big! The tuna fish I had in my dream was this big!”
Readers may remember that we previously featured Bandai’s wondrous home button protector that comes in the form of smartphone underwear. If you enjoyed that story will be pleased to hear that there is now a second generation of these awesome ‘Smart Pants‘, available in all new styles and colors. With this new lineup of smartphone underwear, a home button seal is also now included in case your underwear happen to come off (see below). And in true Japanese style, it takes on a pixelated/mosaic style – ostensibly a reference to censored Japanese porn [1]. You can see all the underwear and mosaic stickers over on Gashapon.jp. The banana pattern underwear shows a simple banana instead of a mosaic, which is pretty a humorous touch. There’s also Mount Fuji underwear, just in time to commemorate the mountain becoming an official World Heritage site. If you’re in Japan, keep an eye out for these new underwear styles at the many Gashapon vending machines throughout the country! People tell me that Japanese porn is censored in this way, but being completely pure of mind and spirit, I have never actually witnessed this phenomenon first hand. ↩
Readers may remember that we previously featured Bandai’s wondrous home button protector that comes in the form of smartphone underwear. If you enjoyed that story will be pleased to hear that there is now a second generation of these awesome ‘Smart Pants‘, available in all new styles and colors.
With this new lineup of smartphone underwear, a home button seal is also now included in case your underwear happen to come off (see below). And in true Japanese style, it takes on a pixelated/mosaic style – ostensibly a reference to censored Japanese porn [1].
You can see all the underwear and mosaic stickers over on Gashapon.jp. The banana pattern underwear shows a simple banana instead of a mosaic, which is pretty a humorous touch. There’s also Mount Fuji underwear, just in time to commemorate the mountain becoming an official World Heritage site.
If you’re in Japan, keep an eye out for these new underwear styles at the many Gashapon vending machines throughout the country!
People tell me that Japanese porn is censored in this way, but being completely pure of mind and spirit, I have never actually witnessed this phenomenon first hand. ↩
The Imagine Cup is an annual global competition organized by Microsoft, with the aim of nurturing students to be competitive in the international arena. The finals are taking place in St. Petersburg, Russia, where finalists from 71 counties come together to competing for the top awards in five categories, with the winners will be announced late on Thursday night (Japan Time). It will be livestreamed here if you’d like to tune in. The team of Teppei Yoneyama and Chester Lee Chin Zhen (who are both attending Japan’s oldest computer vocational school) are finalists from Japan, proposing a new gaming app development environment. It’s called the Knowall Library, and it has taken about four years to complete. The development suite allows game developers to create a 2D or 3D gaming app relatively easily. To date many people have already developed several gaming titles using the environment, giving it high praise since it is just as sophisticated as many existing products in terms of technical features. The video below shows you how Yoneyama presented the work at his vocational school. It’s in Japanese, but it will give you a better but idea of how it works. We are told that it’s not…
Project N at World Finals venue: Chester Lee Chin Zhen, Teppei Yoneyama (Picture courtesy of Microsoft)
The Imagine Cup is an annual global competition organized by Microsoft, with the aim of nurturing students to be competitive in the international arena. The finals are taking place in St. Petersburg, Russia, where finalists from 71 counties come together to competing for the top awards in five categories, with the winners will be announced late on Thursday night (Japan Time). It will be livestreamed here if you’d like to tune in.
The team of Teppei Yoneyama and Chester Lee Chin Zhen (who are both attending Japan’s oldest computer vocational school) are finalists from Japan, proposing a new gaming app development environment. It’s called the Knowall Library, and it has taken about four years to complete. The development suite allows game developers to create a 2D or 3D gaming app relatively easily. To date many people have already developed several gaming titles using the environment, giving it high praise since it is just as sophisticated as many existing products in terms of technical features.
The video below shows you how Yoneyama presented the work at his vocational school. It’s in Japanese, but it will give you a better but idea of how it works. We are told that it’s not common for gaming app development environment to be chosen as a finalist for the Imagine Cup event.
We certainly wish them the best of luck during the rest of the competition!
For western companies, entering the Asian market is no easy task. There is the inevitable language barrier, not to mention the cultural differences. We had a chance to talk to Anji Ismail, the CEO of online marketing platform DOZ, in order to hear his thoughts on what makes the Japanese market especially different. For starters, online marketing in Japan is very well-developed. According to a study by Dentsu published in March of this year, online marketing budgets in Japan grew by 107.7% compared to the previous year. Anji adds: Japan is actually the second biggest market with over $8.1 billion in total spending in 2012, and it might reach $11 billion in 2015. Mobile is really hot in Japan, with $1.8 billion spent in 2012, ranking as the second biggest market for mobile advertising expenditures, just behind the US. Although Japanese people are known to open their wallets for digital contents such as mobile apps, games, and newsletters, it turns out that they are not especially keen to click on ads. On the web, it’s interesting to note that almost 40% of Japanese never click on sponsored ads on search engines, and only 6% of those who do have bought…
Photo: Simon le nippon on Flickr
For western companies, entering the Asian market is no easy task. There is the inevitable language barrier, not to mention the cultural differences. We had a chance to talk to Anji Ismail, the CEO of online marketing platform DOZ, in order to hear his thoughts on what makes the Japanese market especially different.
For starters, online marketing in Japan is very well-developed. According to a study by Dentsu published in March of this year, online marketing budgets in Japan grew by 107.7% compared to the previous year. Anji adds:
Japan is actually the second biggest market with over $8.1 billion in total spending in 2012, and it might reach $11 billion in 2015. Mobile is really hot in Japan, with $1.8 billion spent in 2012, ranking as the second biggest market for mobile advertising expenditures, just behind the US.
Although Japanese people are known to open their wallets for digital contents such as mobile apps, games, and newsletters, it turns out that they are not especially keen to click on ads.
On the web, it’s interesting to note that almost 40% of Japanese never click on sponsored ads on search engines, and only 6% of those who do have bought something after clicking. Actually, Japan has one of the lowest click-through rates, with only a 1.4% click rate on web ads. However, budgets are growing for search engine and social media optimization.
While Japanese people do click on ads, the CTR remains low. A relevant survey by Goo Research shows that almost 63% of respondents have clicked on ads shown on search results, while 24% have not. When asked what type of ads they are more likely to click, the most popular response was banner, images, or Flash at roughly 46%, and text ads on search results ranked second at about 28%. Links within newsletters, affiliate links within contents, and links within blog posts (content-match advertising) followed at around 25%.
Of course, entering the Japanese market cannot and should not be just restricted to online marketing. It’s a mixture of offline and online tactics, and some US companies have done it very well. Evernote is one good example. The company marked its third year anniversary in Japan back in March. There are over five million users in Japan and it’s the second most active market after US in terms of active users, with 30% of its revenue coming from the country.
Evernote was a typical case of what is called ‘blogger marketing’ in Japan. They reached out to tech savvy and influential people online, people who acted as ambassadors for the service. Lots of meetups were held, and these ambassadors also helped Evernote with promotion in book and other publications. Searching for ‘Evernote’ on Amazon Japan now yields over 500 results.
Google is another company that many Japanese people find appealing. In a survey about popular online brands, Google ranked third after Rakuten and Yahoo. That score is calculated from important factors such as usability, number of visits, and website loyalty. But the company’s unique promotions have likely been a factor in its popularity. For Google+, the company collaborated with the all-girl idol group AKB 48 and fashionista/pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. To promote its Chrome web browser, the company aired a TV commercial featuring the popular virtual diva Hatsune Miku.
Of course these are just a few cases, and there are many others. And given the money to be made in this lucrative market (especially on mobile), marketing to Japanese consumers will continue to be a challenge — but one with a big payoff for those who do it right.
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Masaru Ikeda
