Line Corportation corporation recently announced that its Line Rangers game has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The title was initially released back on February 28th, reaching the milestone in just 61 days. Such a feat is not so uncommon for a Line game, but it’s interesting to see that the company has decided to support this one with a TV commercial in Japan, especially considering that 70% of its downloads came from outside of Japan (it’s currently the top overall iOS app in Thailand and Laos). You can check out that promotional video which we have included below. As we noted in a previous post, Line Rangers is indeed a great game, but it is very much a rip-off of Battle Cats, the popular tower defense game from Kyoto-based Ponos. If you’d like to try it out, you can get Line Rangers for free on iOS or on Google Play.
Line Corportation corporation recently announced that its Line Rangers game has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The title was initially released back on February 28th, reaching the milestone in just 61 days.
Such a feat is not so uncommon for a Line game, but it’s interesting to see that the company has decided to support this one with a TV commercial in Japan, especially considering that 70% of its downloads came from outside of Japan (it’s currently the top overall iOS app in Thailand and Laos). You can check out that promotional video which we have included below.
As we noted in a previous post, Line Rangers is indeed a great game, but it is very much a rip-off of Battle Cats, the popular tower defense game from Kyoto-based Ponos.
If you’d like to try it out, you can get Line Rangers for free on iOS or on Google Play.
This morning I met with Canadian research student Laurel Hart who is currently in Tokyo studying mobile photography communities in Japan. Even though we’ve written about mobile photo apps significantly on this site (which is how she found me), I needed to take some time to think about what information I might be able to offer her. I thought I’d share some of those thoughts here, just in case it might be of interest to readers as well. While there has been some indication that Japanese mobile users love photo apps more than other regional markets (see this chart from Flurry Analytics) [1], it’s a little bit more difficult to identify what kinds of things they are doing and what sorts of photos they are taking. In a purely non-scientific exercise, I thought I’d review a few of the kinds of apps we see trending here in Japan, in an effort to dive deeper this area. Here a few genres of photo apps (and photo-related apps [2]), in no particular order: Collage apps (Petapic, Cameran Collage, Papelook) Photo decorations apps (DecoAlbum, Snapeee) Food apps (SnapDish, Miil) Fashion apps (Wear, Nailbook, Stulio, In My Bag ) Manga/Anime effects (Manga Camera, Otaku…
This morning I met with Canadian research student Laurel Hart who is currently in Tokyo studying mobile photography communities in Japan. Even though we’ve written about mobile photo apps significantly on this site (which is how she found me), I needed to take some time to think about what information I might be able to offer her. I thought I’d share some of those thoughts here, just in case it might be of interest to readers as well.
While there has been some indication that Japanese mobile users love photo apps more than other regional markets (see this chart from Flurry Analytics) [1], it’s a little bit more difficult to identify what kinds of things they are doing and what sorts of photos they are taking.
In a purely non-scientific exercise, I thought I’d review a few of the kinds of apps we see trending here in Japan, in an effort to dive deeper this area. Here a few genres of photo apps (and photo-related apps [2]), in no particular order:
These represent just a few of the more popular clusters of photos apps that we have seen here in Japan. Of course, everyone makes use of their mobile camera for different reasons, so we cannot claim that there is any sort of trend among consumers here. But perhaps we can assume that the apps that Japanese developers produce are at least partially indicative of the market’s demands.
As for mobile photography communities, I confess I’ve never seen such groups gathering offline [4]. But we often see people come together online around common ideas or themes. For example, the Nailbook app mentioned above is an intriguing community where people exchange pictures of nail art. And then their are mobile photographers who share photos around a suddenly viral meme, such as the ‘Cups Fuchiko-san’ meme where a tiny figure is posed on cups or glasses in strange ways, or the Makankosappo (literally translated as “Magic Penetrating Killing Ray”) meme, upon which the Kame-Camera app is based.
The world of smartphone photography obviously runs far deeper than what I’ve outlined above. If you there’s something that we’ve overlooked, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.
This chart doesn’t seem to be on Flurry’s site any longer. But thankfully, we still have a version here. ↩
I say photo-related, because some photo apps might technically be classified by an App Store as a photography app, but it might have a different primary purpose. The mobile flea market app Fril is an example of this. ↩
These are interesting considering the aging demographic in Japan, giving you the ability to send prints to older folks who may not use smartphones. ↩
It seems rather silly to me to define a photography community by device. ↩
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.
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.
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… ↩
This past March saw the three year anniversary of the tragic 3.11 earthquake here in Japan. At the time, Line Corporation released a set of stickers to sell on its platform, drawn by kids from the affected regions. The set of 24 stickers, pictured below, were to be sold for 100 yen (or about $1) with proceeds going towards ongoing recovery efforts. According to japan.internet.com this evening, that set of stickers has now raised over 38 million yen (about $370,000) in the six short weeks that they have been available for purchase. Line apparently doesn’t make any money from this, taking only what it needs to handle transaction fees on Apple and Google app stores. The stickers can still be purchased if you’d like to do so, as they’ll be available until September 10 of this year. Line did something similar to assist with Typhoon Haiyan relief in the Philippines last year, raising over $500,000 in that effort. via japan.internet.com
This past March saw the three year anniversary of the tragic 3.11 earthquake here in Japan. At the time, Line Corporation released a set of stickers to sell on its platform, drawn by kids from the affected regions. The set of 24 stickers, pictured below, were to be sold for 100 yen (or about $1) with proceeds going towards ongoing recovery efforts.
According to japan.internet.com this evening, that set of stickers has now raised over 38 million yen (about $370,000) in the six short weeks that they have been available for purchase. Line apparently doesn’t make any money from this, taking only what it needs to handle transaction fees on Apple and Google app stores.
The stickers can still be purchased if you’d like to do so, as they’ll be available until September 10 of this year.
Line did something similar to assist with Typhoon Haiyan relief in the Philippines last year, raising over $500,000 in that effort.
Line released its mobile game Sonic Dash S, developed by Sega, back in late January. The title was made available in a number of Asian countries, but it hadn’t performed very well until a recent 1.1 update gave it a boost in most of its app markets. Still, this is perhaps the most famous IP that Line has featured in a game to date, and I’d expected it to perform far better. I hadn’t given the game a serious look until recently, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts here. Sonic Dash is, as has been pointed out before, more or less a Temple Run clone, requiring you to swipe up/down/left/right to avoid enemies and treacherous obstacles. You can gather and use items you collect, as well as use supporting characters (or Chaos [1]). With the exception of a number of surprising app crashes, I found the gameplay pretty straightforward, with much of the Line integration that we have from the company’s other mobile games. You can get rewards by sharing information to your friends on Line, and even borrow Chao characters from them if you wish. The problem for me is that only one of my 162 Line…
Line released its mobile game Sonic Dash S, developed by Sega, back in late January. The title was made available in a number of Asian countries, but it hadn’t performed very well until a recent 1.1 update gave it a boost in most of its app markets. Still, this is perhaps the most famous IP that Line has featured in a game to date, and I’d expected it to perform far better.
I hadn’t given the game a serious look until recently, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts here. Sonic Dash is, as has been pointed out before, more or less a Temple Run clone, requiring you to swipe up/down/left/right to avoid enemies and treacherous obstacles. You can gather and use items you collect, as well as use supporting characters (or Chaos [1]).
With the exception of a number of surprising app crashes, I found the gameplay pretty straightforward, with much of the Line integration that we have from the company’s other mobile games. You can get rewards by sharing information to your friends on Line, and even borrow Chao characters from them if you wish. The problem for me is that only one of my 162 Line friends is actually playing Sonic Dash – not a good number in comparison to other Line games I’ve played.
With the new 1.1 update a number of changes have been made to the game, with stages shortened and a new character, Blaze (pictured below), added to the list of playable characters [2]. A new beach course has been added to the game as well.
If you’d like to give Line Sonic Dash S a try, you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android. Let us know in the comments if you find it a tad crashy as well!
By ‘Chaos’ I don’t mean the word ‘chaos’ but rather plural of the word ‘Chao’. ↩
You need to spend rings to upgrade to Blaze of course, so it will take a little while before you can unlock her. ↩
See the original article, written in Japanese With Tokyo chosen as host for the 2020 Olympics, the city is likely to get more and more attention from tourists. Of course among the many tourists expected to come to Japan, many will be Muslim. Tokyo International Airport recently opened a prayer room for Muslims, but there are other issues to work on. One such issue is food. For example, when I spend time with Muslim friends in Tokyo, it can be difficult to find alcohol-free soy sauce and menus which don’t contain pork. But one entrepreneur has stepped up to try to solve this problem. Fukuoka-based Kyushu Lab has launched an Android app called HalalMinds. It enables users to scan the bar code of any product to identify if it is halal, or permissable for Muslims to eat. The app also has a Qibla Compass feature, which lets Muslims to determine the right direction for performing prayers. Japan already has a Muslim population of about 150,000, and about the same number live in South Korea too. Nearly 1.2 million Muslims visit Japan every year either for sightseeing or for business. Kyushu Lab wants to help serve this demographic as potential users…
With Tokyo chosen as host for the 2020 Olympics, the city is likely to get more and more attention from tourists. Of course among the many tourists expected to come to Japan, many will be Muslim. Tokyo International Airport recently opened a prayer room for Muslims, but there are other issues to work on. One such issue is food. For example, when I spend time with Muslim friends in Tokyo, it can be difficult to find alcohol-free soy sauce and menus which don’t contain pork. But one entrepreneur has stepped up to try to solve this problem.
Fukuoka-based Kyushu Lab has launched an Android app called HalalMinds. It enables users to scan the bar code of any product to identify if it is halal, or permissable for Muslims to eat. The app also has a Qibla Compass feature, which lets Muslims to determine the right direction for performing prayers.
Japan already has a Muslim population of about 150,000, and about the same number live in South Korea too. Nearly 1.2 million Muslims visit Japan every year either for sightseeing or for business. Kyushu Lab wants to help serve this demographic as potential users or HamalMinds.
The app was developed by Indonesian student Agung Pambudi, a member of Kyushu Lab who has lived in Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Finland. Along with his doctoral studies in Kyushu University, he put a lot of effort into developing this app. He explained:
As a Muslim, we need to live our everyday lives with halal food and drink. But it is hard to find such products in Japan because some processed foods contain pork or alcohol. Also, we even recognize meat not processed in a permissible way as non-Halal. We developed HalalMinds with the aim to of bringing it to not only Japanese users, but to users around the world.
Considering the overall size of Muslim population, even here in Japan, I think there is much potential to monetize such an app. I recall a team of university students who designed an app called C@ndy, a sort of Craiglist for Muslims.
Singapore-based startup Bitsmedia launched an app called Muslim Pro which lets you find halal restaurants and read the Koran. That app achieved 4 million downloads in March 2014.
HalalMinds released its Android app early this month, and an iOS version will follow at the end of this month.
This is a complex issue, but I think it boils down to this: Most of Japan’s news app creators do not put the interests of their users above the interests of content publishers. So while users around the world can read news in apps with beautiful typography of an appropriate size (see Pocket, Instapaper, or Reeder), most Japanese readers – or those who use domestically produced apps anyway – are given the original webpage in an in-app browser, often showing typeface that’s too small to read, or a page that has not been optimized for mobile. While the app developers I’ve spoken to are reluctant to acknowledge it, most industry observers I ask point to publishers who cry foul over copyright law, complaining about stripped-out ads, and a lack of metrics from readers who come on site. These debates occurred on a global scale years ago, and while they were not resolved in a neat and tidy fashion, the internet appears to have generally settled that such use (whether it is via a republished RSS feed for via scraping) is ok [1]. But Japanese companies who have ventured to create news apps have almost universally opted to err on the…
Scared?
This is a complex issue, but I think it boils down to this:
Most of Japan’s news app creators do not put the interests of their users above the interests of content publishers. So while users around the world can read news in apps with beautiful typography of an appropriate size (see Pocket, Instapaper, or Reeder), most Japanese readers – or those who use domestically produced apps anyway – are given the original webpage in an in-app browser, often showing typeface that’s too small to read, or a page that has not been optimized for mobile.
While the app developers I’ve spoken to are reluctant to acknowledge it, most industry observers I ask point to publishers who cry foul over copyright law, complaining about stripped-out ads, and a lack of metrics from readers who come on site. These debates occurred on a global scale years ago, and while they were not resolved in a neat and tidy fashion, the internet appears to have generally settled that such use (whether it is via a republished RSS feed for via scraping) is ok [1].
But Japanese companies who have ventured to create news apps have almost universally opted to err on the side of caution by showing the original webpage content in their app, as is, without any effort to ensure that it’s readable on mobile [2]. They have purposefully chosen to not disrupt or challenge current content models.
Let’s look at a few examples from some of Japan’s leading news apps. Here’s Gunosy:
Gunosy does what most Japanese news apps do. They serve up the original web page when the title is clicked, whether its very readable or not. Other Japanese apps that do this are Presso, Romly, Vingow, Mynd, and Kamelio[3]. These news apps are primarily aggregators or curation tools. I wouldn’t go so far as to call any of them ‘news readers’, because technically, you’re just being directed to a traditional reading experience on the source site.
SmartNews’s approach is an interesting one, maybe the only one that is even a little daring. They are one of the few companies to present a readability mode, boasting offline caching as a feature for Japanese users who might be beyond internet signal on the subway. When you tap to read an article on SmartNews, you are flashed an option to read in ‘SmartMode’. This is SmartNews’s more readable view, but it’s presented as something the user must choose to view deliberately. What’s more, when you press back, the app sneakily presents the original source page (see this below). This is a clever way of giving both the publisher and the user what they want, and I’m sure it took them a while to figure out this compromise.
Line News is also mildly daring, showing longer excerpts relating to one story, collected from various sources. Tapping on any of those sources brings you to the original source, however (see lower left), including ads and undesirable cruft (lower right).
Overall I think it is pretty clear that the relationship that exists between content publishers and news apps that tiptoe around their requirements/expectations is not good for innovation in the content space. Publishers cling to old monetization models instead of searching for new ones, and Japanese readers are denied the kind of beautified reading experience that the rest of the world enjoys [4].
Mobile-friendly news sites are far more common in Japan than in other countries, so if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that. the original page view on mobile is typically not so bad. ↩
Kamelio does some interesting things with timelines which I think are admirable, but they still opt to show the original source in this way. ↩
Unless they use something like Pocket, of course, which many do. ↩
Japanese gaming powerhouse GungHo Online Entertainment, the maker of the hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons, announced this week that Princess Punt Sweets – its second most popular smartphone game – has has surpassed eight million downloads in Japan. The only other region where this title is available is in Korea, having launched back in July of 2013 (iOS and Android). I’m surprised that GungHo has not expanded this game to English regions [1], because I think it really has the kind of cute appeal that has helped so many other Japanese apps succeed in overseas markets in the past year or two. It might be an easier sell to overseas markets than Puzzle & Dragons, I think. If you’d like to try out the Japanese version, you can get it as a free download for iOS and Android. GungHo, CNet Japan Note, I’m not counting the game’s prequel, which GungHo has published in English. ↩
Japanese gaming powerhouse GungHo Online Entertainment, the maker of the hit mobile game Puzzle & Dragons, announced this week that Princess Punt Sweets – its second most popular smartphone game – has has surpassed eight million downloads in Japan.
The only other region where this title is available is in Korea, having launched back in July of 2013 (iOS and Android). I’m surprised that GungHo has not expanded this game to English regions [1], because I think it really has the kind of cute appeal that has helped so many other Japanese apps succeed in overseas markets in the past year or two.
It might be an easier sell to overseas markets than Puzzle & Dragons, I think.
If you’d like to try out the Japanese version, you can get it as a free download for iOS and Android.
This week we witnessed yet another entrant into Japan’s mobile news app space. It’s called Mynd, and it comes from Tokyo-based TomyK, led by Tomihisa Kamada. The app has a very beautiful UI with a number of slick translucent elements (pictured below). It also supports a wide range of external services, including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Pocket, and Hatena. Users can opt to read news at any time, or have a summary delivered to them every morning (like Gunosy does, for example). The single article view defaults to the source’s own web view rather than stripped down text view [1], which is a mistake in my view – but this appears to be common practice among news apps in Japan. It’s interesting to see more and more new apps emerging in this space to challenge the likes of Gunosy and SmartNews. I hope to bring you a closer look at this sector in the near future, so stay tuned for that. For now, if you’d like to give Mynd a try, it’s available as a free download for iOS and Android. Think Instapaper, Readability, or even SmartNews’s ‘Smartmode’. ↩
This week we witnessed yet another entrant into Japan’s mobile news app space. It’s called Mynd, and it comes from Tokyo-based TomyK, led by Tomihisa Kamada.
The app has a very beautiful UI with a number of slick translucent elements (pictured below). It also supports a wide range of external services, including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Pocket, and Hatena. Users can opt to read news at any time, or have a summary delivered to them every morning (like Gunosy does, for example). The single article view defaults to the source’s own web view rather than stripped down text view [1], which is a mistake in my view – but this appears to be common practice among news apps in Japan.
It’s interesting to see more and more new apps emerging in this space to challenge the likes of Gunosy and SmartNews. I hope to bring you a closer look at this sector in the near future, so stay tuned for that.
For now, if you’d like to give Mynd a try, it’s available as a free download for iOS and Android.
Think Instapaper, Readability, or even SmartNews’s ‘Smartmode’. ↩
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
