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Dark Summoner: Just another Japanese card battle game? [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.02.18

Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US. For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners. I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!) We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of…

Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US.

For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners.

I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!)

We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of Rage of Bahamut about the process of bringing that game to global users. You can read that article in its entirety here. ↩
My ID is 1459947259. You can share yours in the comments if you like. ↩

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What’s so special about Line? [Video]

Rick Martin 2013.02.15

Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin. Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line. With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second. For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services. NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to…

Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin.

Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line.

With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second.

For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services.

NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to 400 million users.

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.

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The slick new iPhone app that brings Japanese fashion trends to Asia

Junya Mori 2013.02.14

See original story in Japanese Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese. In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture. New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan. The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.

See original story in Japanese

Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese.

In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture.

New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan.

The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.

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Yahoo Japan’s Face Stealer app transforms you into Obama, or anyone else you’d like to be

Rick Martin 2013.02.13

Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above). Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from. While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube. It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.

Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above).

Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from.

While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube.

It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.

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Rage of Bahamut and Japan’s quest for global gamers

Rick Martin 2013.02.13

One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012. While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million. I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino…

One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012.

While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million.

I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino and Koichi Watanabe who originally developed the Rage of Bahamut concept. I asked him if they were confident that such mobile game genre like card battle games – which at that point were only really proven in Japan – could excel in overseas markets.

To be honest, not really. Back then, no card games like the ones popular in Japan had become breakout hits overseas. We really felt that there would be no way to know without giving it a try.

Cygames had ridden DeNA’s Mobage platform to success in Japan, and they thought perhaps the success of the partnership could extend overseas. DeNA executive Junichi Akagawa noted that they did think that “the desire to collect cool cards should be something universal,” and because of great artwork and past success in the Japanese market, they certainly thought it had the potential to be a hit internationally.

Evolving abroad ¶

Since then, as we all know, Bahamut has been performed amazingly well on top grossing app charts, displaying surprising staying power (see charts below). Kimura says one reason for the games success is because they are always updating and improving it. In terms of making the game appealing for English-speaking users, there was some reworking of the design as well to appeal to Western audiences.

When I recently spoke to the folks from app metrics firm App Annie, one representative also cited outstanding marketing as one of the main reasons why Bahamut has done so well. But it’s important to note that the game was marketed differently abroad than it was in its home market. While the game was heavily advertised on television in and with out-of-home ads in Japan, a referral code system played a large role in helping the game spread in overseas markets. I can attest to this first hand actually, as anything that I’ve written about Bahamut in the past tends to attract a ton of comments from gamers who want to share their codes with others [1].

The game’s impressive artwork has surely helped Bahamut’s popularity among gamers, and I’m told that Cygames illustrator’s have previously worked on Japanese ‘AAA’ game titles [2]. In fact, a collection of artwork from the game was recently published as a book and is now available on Amazon Japan.

Kimura says that in total, the amount of people who worked on Bahamut is roughly the same as would be required for a console.

Whatever the reason for Bahamut’s popularity to date, it’s certainly a good example of a Japanese export thriving on a global scale. February 21st will mark the one-year anniversary of Bahamut on ‘Mobage West,’ so it will be interesting to watch Cygames moving forward with this and other titles for the international market.

¶

appannie.com — Rage of Bahamut on iOS top grossing charts

More recently, I’ve observed the same with Battle Cats, although this referral code mechanic is by no means unique to these two. ↩
I’m not sure what AAA means, but you can bet it’s way better than AA. ↩

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Japanese card battle game ‘Dark Summoner’ tops 5 million downloads worldwide

Rick Martin 2013.02.12

Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer. According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release. A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give…

dark-summoner 2 — AKB48’s Haruna Kojima, for A-Team’s Dark Summoner

Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer.

According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release.

A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give it a short video review once I spend a little more time with it. In the meantime, if you have any tips or advice for the game, feel free to share it in the comments.

See what I did there? ↩

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Japanese app ‘Poica’ wants to carry all your point cards

Rick Martin 2013.02.11

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out). The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1]. Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants,…

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out).

The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1].

Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, or electronic retailers. But technically speaking, I guess almost any card with a barcode would be acceptable. I even store some of my wife’s cards, just to impress her when I get dragged along shopping!

There are some drawbacks however. Not every point card in my collection comes with a bar code. Some of them just include a number, in which case, you cannot enter your card into Poica. But given that it’s a free app, it’s hard to really go wrong with Poica. In contrast, Card Bank – a similar application – costs 99 cents.

Poica just released a 2.0 version a few days ago with a few minor improvements, so now is as good a time as any to check it out.

Note that the bar code in my video is not an actual point card, but just the bar code from a random book. ↩

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Japanese mobile game ‘Battle Cats’ hits 2 million downloads [Gameplay Video]

SCORE 1,085

Rick Martin 2013.02.08

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor. After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too. For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it. Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor.

After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too.

For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it.

Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

battle-cats-ponos-sm — From AppAnnie.com

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Top 5: Japan’s Cutest Mobile Apps

SCORE 11,151

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.06

“Kawaii” is a word you’ll hear from young Japanese girls all too often. It can be roughly translated as ‘cute’ – but times ten or even a hundred. Japanese female youth culture can not be described without it. Anything can be kawaii, ranging from pets to behaviors to boys. So it’s no surprise that we can also find kawaii mobile apps in Japan. Here are just a few of the popular ones. Fril ¶ Fril is a fancy online flea market for female students in high school or college. Within a month of its release, the app was downloaded over 5,000 times and the number of items sold exceeded 10,000. Since most of the users are students, the average price of items is pretty low, at around 2,000 to 3,000 yen (or $22 to $34). Surprisingly Fril is an all-guy team and a graduate startup from Tokyo-based Open Network Lab incubator. Over 100 interviews with their target users have paid off, because Fril is definitely one of the most well-designed app for girls. It is currently available for iOS and Android if you’d like to give it a try. Snapeee ¶ Snapeee is a purikura app, which means it lets…

“Kawaii” is a word you’ll hear from young Japanese girls all too often. It can be roughly translated as ‘cute’ – but times ten or even a hundred. Japanese female youth culture can not be described without it. Anything can be kawaii, ranging from pets to behaviors to boys. So it’s no surprise that we can also find kawaii mobile apps in Japan. Here are just a few of the popular ones.

Fril ¶

Fril is a fancy online flea market for female students in high school or college. Within a month of its release, the app was downloaded over 5,000 times and the number of items sold exceeded 10,000. Since most of the users are students, the average price of items is pretty low, at around 2,000 to 3,000 yen (or $22 to $34). Surprisingly Fril is an all-guy team and a graduate startup from Tokyo-based Open Network Lab incubator. Over 100 interviews with their target users have paid off, because Fril is definitely one of the most well-designed app for girls. It is currently available for iOS and Android if you’d like to give it a try.

Snapeee ¶

Snapeee is a purikura app, which means it lets you take photo booth style pictures with many decorative features. Released in May of 2011, the app has attracted users not just in Japan but all across Asia, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. People in other parts of Asia really like “kawaii” things too, and half a year after its release, the app has been downloaded over 800,000 times with half of those from overseas. Snapeee adds decorative stamps, brushes, and frames to the app everyday. Decorated photos can be shared on different social network such as Facebook, Twitter, mixi, GREE, Ameba, Renren, and Sina Weibo. The application is available for both iOS and Android.

Decopic ¶

A product of Community Factory Inc, Decopic is another popular purikura app and is a competitor of the afore-mentioned Snapeee. It was recently announced that it had reached the lofty milestone of 12 million downloads, which is certainly an impressive mark for any mobile app. The company was bought by Yahoo Japan in September of last year, for an estimated price of one billion yen (about $11 million) [1]. Yahoo Japan was eager to get into mobile, and successfully obtained Decopic’s eight million users.

The app can be distinguished by its unique user interface, as it is not designed like a typical smartphone app. It’s more like the purikura machines to which its target users are accustomed. It’s available for both iOS and Android.

iQon ¶

iQon is a fashion community that allows users to create magazine-like collages of fashion styles, sort of the Japanese equivalent to Polyvore. iQon was originally a web service only, but it released an iPhone app in February of last year. With over one million visitors as of March, 2012, the number of collages posted on the service has increased by a factor of twenty. The main users are in their twenties, and they access the app nine times a day on average. It’s available for both iOS and Android.

Nameco ¶

The tweets and posts originating from within this app at one point practically filled my entire Twitter stream. Nameco is a game that requires users to grow and harvest mushrooms, and it has been downloaded over 13,000,000 times as of June, 2012, with a 4.5 star rating on the iTunes app store. The huge popularity of Nameco is due to its uber-cute mushroom character. There are over one hundred types of physical merchandise items for the character, and that certainly puts it in a lucrative space as we have seen from Rovio with Angry Birds. It has even managed to collaborate with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. The app is currently available for both iOS and Android.

There are so many of these apps that it’s impossible to cover them all in just one article. But if you’re looking to reach Japanese or Asian girls in their twenties, these apps are certainly a good model to follow.

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space.

That estimated price is according to TechCrunch Japan. ↩

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How Japan’s SnapDish app catered to foreign foodies

Junya Mori 2013.02.06

Many mobile applications from Japan aspire to reach a global audience. The food photo and recipe-sharing mobile app SnapDish is an example of such app. And so far, it has fared well. Up until now it has been available in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Korean. But it recently announced the addition of seven more: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Indonesian, and Thai. Snapdish now potentially supports three billion people speaking those eleven languages around the world. The app, which lets cooking enthusiasts edit and share food photos, was launched in May 2011. To date it has cataloged more than 1.7 million pictures, with more than 10 million Yummies (similar to a Facebook’s Like function). SnapDish is getting more and more popular, mainly among people who cook at home. They are able to connect with a wide range of people and chat about cooking through photos and recipes. We recently spoke to a SnapDish representative in charge of language support. His comments follow below. SnapDish on going global SnapDish representative: When developing and designing the app, which we launched in May of 2011, we had overseas users in mind from the very beginning and we planned…

Many mobile applications from Japan aspire to reach a global audience. The food photo and recipe-sharing mobile app SnapDish is an example of such app. And so far, it has fared well.

Up until now it has been available in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Korean. But it recently announced the addition of seven more: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Indonesian, and Thai. Snapdish now potentially supports three billion people speaking those eleven languages around the world.

The app, which lets cooking enthusiasts edit and share food photos, was launched in May 2011. To date it has cataloged more than 1.7 million pictures, with more than 10 million Yummies (similar to a Facebook’s Like function).

SnapDish is getting more and more popular, mainly among people who cook at home. They are able to connect with a wide range of people and chat about cooking through photos and recipes. We recently spoke to a SnapDish representative in charge of language support. His comments follow below.

SnapDish on going global

SnapDish representative: When developing and designing the app, which we launched in May of 2011, we had overseas users in mind from the very beginning and we planned to launch its English and Japanese versions at the same time. So with the intention of having an English user interface, instead of simply translating the context literally, we designed the app so it would be easy to use for both Japanese and non-Japanese users.

We also paid close attention to whether or not English expressions in the app sound fun for English users. For example, there is a button called Mogu Mogu in the Japanese version. This works like Facebook’s Like button and users can click it when they like other users’ photos. But in the English version, this button is instead labeled Yummy. Whereas Mogu mogu translates more literally into English as nom nom or chomp chomp, but since such expressions are not as friendly or appealing in English, SnapDish chose the more natural-sounding Yummy. We are taking equal care to use natural expressions as we expand into other languages.

As a result, the application has been regularly downloaded overseas since its initial release. The app gained many users, particularly in Southeast Asia and Chinese-speaking regions, and we quickly learned that it’s not only Japanese foodies, but also folks in other Asian countries like the combination of food and photos.

Even after launching apps, we figure out users’ needs and try to meet those them. For example, genres that can be tagged on pictures are customized to each countries’ food culture. Since the application was developed from the very beginning with foreign users in mind, many users overseas regularly report that they didn’t realize that the application was Japanese. American users often assume that it was developed in an English-speaking country. Such feedback confirms that even foreign users can use the application seamlessly.

Building the business

SnapDish representative: Last year, we expanded our service further by partnering with large foreign companies such as China’s Renren.com and Korea’s SK Planet. Thanks to these partnerships we realized that there are many people who think the SnapDish app can meet the needs of Asian consumers, and that our service can add value.

Also, we actively applied for overseas startup pitch events last year and participated in Singapore’s Echelon in June, Taiwan’s IDEAS Show in July, and GMIC-SV which was held in San Jose, USA, in October. At those events, we not only made presentations but also set up our booth in venues, so we were able to talk with existing overseas users and build our network. We were even interviewed by foreign media companies, so it was very beneficial from a promotional standpoint as well.

We were well-received especially in Asia, and we had a chance to pitch at Echelon as one of the top 10 startups selected from six Asian countries. We asked an event organizer about the reason why we were selected, and we were told that we differentiated our app from other food photo apps with a home-cooking feature, and that it was great that we had developed a monetization plan.

What’s next for SnapDish?

SnapDish rep: While still paying attention to details in the app, we are looking to provide promotional and communication features that fit in with each local market. For example, we are planning to launch our gift campaign, which is only available in Japan at the moment, to foreign markets.

We continue to put our priority on Asia for our international business. Of course, it doesn’t mean that other regions such as Europe are not important. In Asia, we have already established a substantial user base and are forming a community there. We are already well-grounded in the Asian market, so we would like to solidify that market position.

We also want to continue to take part in pitch events abroad, and at the same time, just like we promoted our service in Asia last year, we are looking for a chance to do the same in Europe as well.

If you want to download SnapDish, you can get it here for iOS and Android.

(Photo: e27)

iOS

Dark Summoner: Just another Japanese card battle game? [Video]

The slick new iPhone app that brings Japanese fashion trends to Asia

Yahoo Japan’s Face Stealer app transforms you into Obama, or anyone else you’d like to be