Remember that Line Deco homescreen customization app we told you about last month? Well Line Corporation announced today that just 23 days after its April 22nd release, the app has surpassed 100 million downloads. That’s a pretty good month, even by Line’s standards.
It’s available for both iOS and Android if you’d like to take it for a spin. Check out some of the screens below for examples of what you can do in the app, or check out the newly added gallery feature to explore even more.
A few weeks ago we heard from a Duolingo rep that they had some big news coming for us soon. We haven’t heard from them since, but today we know what it is (via TechCrunch), as the company has launched version 4.0 of its language learning iOS app. The good news? There are now English courses for Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi speakers. We encourage you to give them a try and let us know if they are any good. The bad news? Still no Japanese or Chinese courses for English speakers [1]. Bad news for me at least, as these are two I was hoping would be added. ↩
A few weeks ago we heard from a Duolingo rep that they had some big news coming for us soon. We haven’t heard from them since, but today we know what it is (via TechCrunch), as the company has launched version 4.0 of its language learning iOS app.
The good news? There are now English courses for Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi speakers. We encourage you to give them a try and let us know if they are any good.
The bad news? Still no Japanese or Chinese courses for English speakers [1].
Bad news for me at least, as these are two I was hoping would be added. ↩
Tokyo-based Gunosy, the startup behind the news curation app of the same name, launched an iOS app for the UK market this week. This version lets you to curate updates and articles from about 500 publications including UK-based news resources, such as The Register, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Telegraph. The company plans to launch an Android app for the UK market next month, and an app for the US market will follow soon. They aim to reach 80 million downloads in the global market three years from now. via TechCrunch Japan
Tokyo-based Gunosy, the startup behind the news curation app of the same name, launched an iOS app for the UK market this week. This version lets you to curate updates and articles from about 500 publications including UK-based news resources, such as The Register, BBC, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Telegraph.
The company plans to launch an Android app for the UK market next month, and an app for the US market will follow soon. They aim to reach 80 million downloads in the global market three years from now.
via TechCrunch Japan
Japan’s DeNA launched a very unusual mobile game today. The title is really hard to translate [1], but suffice to say that it includes ‘Peach butts’, reflecting the fun, rotund characters featured in this title. DeNA seems pretty focused on its domestic activity these days (as our friend Serkan Toto recently pointed out), but I hope that a game as quirky as this one can someday make it into English too. Check out their video trailer for the title below. If you’d like to try it out (and if you’re in Japan), you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android. Give it a try, if for nothing else than to see the fun characters for yourself! So much awesome… The name is ももじりぞくの ぷるるんバルーン. Peach butts jelly shake balloon? I give up… ↩
Japan’s DeNA launched a very unusual mobile game today. The title is really hard to translate [1], but suffice to say that it includes ‘Peach butts’, reflecting the fun, rotund characters featured in this title.
DeNA seems pretty focused on its domestic activity these days (as our friend Serkan Toto recently pointed out), but I hope that a game as quirky as this one can someday make it into English too.
Check out their video trailer for the title below. If you’d like to try it out (and if you’re in Japan), you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android. Give it a try, if for nothing else than to see the fun characters for yourself! So much awesome…
The name is ももじりぞくの ぷるるんバルーン. Peach butts jelly shake balloon? I give up… ↩
Apple’s Q2 2014 earnings are out, with the company reporting 26% revenue growth in Japan. It is very true that looking at Apple’s year-on-year revenue growth is very flattering towards the Japan market, as you can see in our chart here: To be precise, Apple’s strong performance in Japan is (of course) powered by the iPhone, where Apple has taken 55% of the smartphone market, and iPhone sales were up 50% year-on-year (according to CEO Tim Cook in the earnings call). If we step back a little bit, and Apple’s long-term overall revenue picture for Japan is less dramatic, as you can see below. China is very obviously the company’s primary engine for growth in recent quarters.
Apple’s Q2 2014 earnings are out, with the company reporting 26% revenue growth in Japan. It is very true that looking at Apple’s year-on-year revenue growth is very flattering towards the Japan market, as you can see in our chart here:
To be precise, Apple’s strong performance in Japan is (of course) powered by the iPhone, where Apple has taken 55% of the smartphone market, and iPhone sales were up 50% year-on-year (according to CEO Tim Cook in the earnings call).
If we step back a little bit, and Apple’s long-term overall revenue picture for Japan is less dramatic, as you can see below. China is very obviously the company’s primary engine for growth in recent quarters.
See the original article written in Japanese Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event. Wine It! Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine. There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on. Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could…
See the original article written in Japanese
Last weekend at the Microsoft Japan Office here in Tokyo, the ninth edition of the Samurai Venture Summit took place. This is a semi-annual startup event organized by Samurai Incubate, and is a great opportunity for investors to find startups in the early seed stages. Here is a quick rundown of the startups that caught our eye at the event.
Wine It is an app that identify the kind of wine you are drinking by taking picture of the label with a smartphone camera. The app contains data for nearly 11,000 wine brands, including information such as grape variety, the place of production, and cuisines that match the wine.
There is an app called Sakenote that helps you to keep track of Japanese sake that you drink. But the main feature of Sakenote is to keep a record of your experience, Wine It is more like a wine encyclopedia. If you can’t find a certain brand of wine in the app, the information will be transferred to a sommelier, and it will be added to the database later on.
Wine It! has not succeeded in monetizing just yet, but it could be possible to create an e-commerce service such as a Sake subscription service.
This initiative began as an incubated startup at D2C, a joint venture of NTT Docomo and ad agency Dentsu.
Many aspiring fashion designers have dreamt of launching their own brand. But doing so requires a very complicated process. In addition to creating your designs, you need to look for factories and then convince retailers or online stores to sell it.
But using a service like STARted, you need only upload a hand-drawn design of your dress, and STARted takes over the rest of the process. It’s a little early to talk about the potential of the service since it is still in the closed testing phase right now, with plans to launch this summer.
However, if the startup successfully builds a solid platform, perhaps implementing a crowdfunding system, it could become a place that helps designers do business without the usual required capital or risk.
Edulio is an online learning platform that launched in Japan earlier this month. The first ‘O’ in MOOC stands for ‘open’, but in contrast, Edulio is a platform that runs closed online courses. It has about 180 clients including training companies and private preparatory schools. The platform lets clients to provide online courses for a closed group of users, and it has a dashboard where clients can track the learning progress of the participants and manage tests and results.
As Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program, mentioned at the recent New Economy Summit, the audience is not forced to engage, so it is important to build a system that motivates them to participate in learning. Edulio currently lets users who are taking the same course share their achievements, with future plans to strengthening this feature later on.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
