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Yoyo launches rewards platform in Indonesia, offers free internet access to Android users

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Manila-based Yoyo Holdings [1], the Japanese-led startup known for its mobile rewards platform Candy, announced last week that it has launched a lock screen-based rewards platform for Android users in Indonesia, called PopSlide. The app is available on Google Play in Indonesia. The platform distributes news, weather forecasts, other updates, and ads to your smartphone lock screen. In return for viewing such information, users receive rewards for free Internet access on their smartphone. See also: Mobile rewards startup Yoyo Holdings raises $1.3 million From Infinity Ventures Summit in Kyoto: 13 startups pitch at Launch Pad competition Prior to Indonesia, Yoyo Holdings launched PopSlide in the Philippines in August last year, where the app surpassed 100,000 downloads in only 10 days after launch and stayed on top of the free Lifestyle Category of the Google Play store for 30 days. Their advertisers include major global brands such as McDonald’s, Nestle, Unilever, Intel, and CNN. Yoyo Holdings will launch the service in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, aiming to serve over 400 million Android users in Southeast Asia. Edited by Kurt Hanson Incorporated in Singapore. ↩

popslide_featuredimage

Manila-based Yoyo Holdings [1], the Japanese-led startup known for its mobile rewards platform Candy, announced last week that it has launched a lock screen-based rewards platform for Android users in Indonesia, called PopSlide. The app is available on Google Play in Indonesia.

The platform distributes news, weather forecasts, other updates, and ads to your smartphone lock screen. In return for viewing such information, users receive rewards for free Internet access on their smartphone.

See also:

Prior to Indonesia, Yoyo Holdings launched PopSlide in the Philippines in August last year, where the app surpassed 100,000 downloads in only 10 days after launch and stayed on top of the free Lifestyle Category of the Google Play store for 30 days. Their advertisers include major global brands such as McDonald’s, Nestle, Unilever, Intel, and CNN.

Yoyo Holdings will launch the service in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia, aiming to serve over 400 million Android users in Southeast Asia.

Edited by Kurt Hanson

  1. Incorporated in Singapore. ↩

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Japan’s Adways launches pre-registration platform in US, helping game developers better monetize

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Adways Interactive, a San Francisco-based subsidiary of Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2489), announced last week that it has released the beta version of a pre-registration platform in the US, called PreLaunch Party. The platform is aimed to serve mid-core Android game developers and help them improve their user retention rate, ARPU (average revenue per user) as well as LTV (user lifetime value). From a user perspective, pre-registration platforms make you register before the launch of a game title, and subsequently can get rewards when the title finally launches. You can get not only the latest game information but also rewards such as rare items or draw gacha rewards for free which typical users need to pay for. In this way, game developers can help promoting their titles and reach potential users before its launch. PreLaunch Party was launched in 2013 in Japan under the name of Yoyaku Top 10, and has expanded to Korea, China, and Taiwan to date. Currently used by 500,000 registered users, it has recorded LTV and retention rate of over 1.5 times higher than that of organic users. In Japan, there are several pre-registration platforms available now, which are obviously competitors for PreLaunch Party, including Ichihaya,…

prelaunch-party_featuredimage

Adways Interactive, a San Francisco-based subsidiary of Japanese internet company Adways (TSE:2489), announced last week that it has released the beta version of a pre-registration platform in the US, called PreLaunch Party. The platform is aimed to serve mid-core Android game developers and help them improve their user retention rate, ARPU (average revenue per user) as well as LTV (user lifetime value).

From a user perspective, pre-registration platforms make you register before the launch of a game title, and subsequently can get rewards when the title finally launches. You can get not only the latest game information but also rewards such as rare items or draw gacha rewards for free which typical users need to pay for. In this way, game developers can help promoting their titles and reach potential users before its launch.

PreLaunch Party was launched in 2013 in Japan under the name of Yoyaku Top 10, and has expanded to Korea, China, and Taiwan to date. Currently used by 500,000 registered users, it has recorded LTV and retention rate of over 1.5 times higher than that of organic users.

In Japan, there are several pre-registration platforms available now, which are obviously competitors for PreLaunch Party, including Ichihaya, Flying Gatcha, and Game Gift.

prelaunch-party-arpu
Source: Adways
prelaunch-party-retention-rate
Source: Adways

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Japan’s Creema launches iOS app, gives users instant access to handmade items sellers

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind a C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced 7 November that it has introduced an iOS app for the service. The company fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund in June and has developed the app using the funds with the aim to improve accessibility for their mobile users. Since its launch in 2010, Creema has listed over 650,000 handmade items and acquired over two million monthly visitors. Their monthly transaction volume is seeing good growth and has doubled in comparison with five months ago when they partnered with Japanese telco KDDI coinciding, with the aforementioned funding. In differentiation with other C2C marketplaces like Mercari and Fril, Creema is focused on handmade items, allowing users to interact with creators and order their custom-made items as well as listed items. While this version of the app allows buyers to browse and purchase items only, a new version, which is scheduled to go live mid-November, will support the function that enables sellers to submit their items to the marketplace. In this space Taiwan-born handmade marketplace Pinkoi, which is backed by Japan’s Infinity Venture Partners, has been expanding into Japanese where they have adopted the “Mobile First” strategy. Pinkoi has released its localized Android and iOS apps for Japanese users, so the…

creema_iosapp_screenshots

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind a C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced 7 November that it has introduced an iOS app for the service. The company fundraised 100 million yen ($1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund in June and has developed the app using the funds with the aim to improve accessibility for their mobile users.

Since its launch in 2010, Creema has listed over 650,000 handmade items and acquired over two million monthly visitors. Their monthly transaction volume is seeing good growth and has doubled in comparison with five months ago when they partnered with Japanese telco KDDI coinciding, with the aforementioned funding. In differentiation with other C2C marketplaces like Mercari and Fril, Creema is focused on handmade items, allowing users to interact with creators and order their custom-made items as well as listed items.

While this version of the app allows buyers to browse and purchase items only, a new version, which is scheduled to go live mid-November, will support the function that enables sellers to submit their items to the marketplace.

In this space Taiwan-born handmade marketplace Pinkoi, which is backed by Japan’s Infinity Venture Partners, has been expanding into Japanese where they have adopted the “Mobile First” strategy. Pinkoi has released its localized Android and iOS apps for Japanese users, so the launch of Creema’s mobile app at this time means that the Japanese company is ready for a battle with the Taiwanese competitor.

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Unda mobile messaging app rebrands to VideoSelfie, secures new funding round

Yukari Mitsuhashi Yukari Mitsuhashi
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See the original story in Japanese. Unda is a mobile video messaging app brought from 500 Startups incubator last year. It will rebrand as VideoSelfie this week. The app allows users to take a video clip with a smartphone, add animated filters and music to it, and share it with other users. Tokyo-based Pocket Supernova, the company behind the app, has $1.2 million in a seed round from East Ventures, Klab Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and other investors. See also: Could the next wave in mobile messaging be video? 500 Startups’ Unda hopes so. Focused on real-time editing The Unda messaging app was developed for the exchange of video messages. But the team realized it would be a matter before the market was saturated, so they began differentiating themselves with new technology, according to Pocket Supernova CEO and co-founder Oscar Yasser Noriega. Since early 2014, the team has been focusing on adding real-time editing to the app, which allows users to add animated GIFs to selfie videos and share them with friends or other users via social network services. In addition, users can communicate with each other in the VideoSelfie community, which is similar to Instagram. Noriega explained: Many users take…

videoselfie_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Unda is a mobile video messaging app brought from 500 Startups incubator last year. It will rebrand as VideoSelfie this week.

The app allows users to take a video clip with a smartphone, add animated filters and music to it, and share it with other users. Tokyo-based Pocket Supernova, the company behind the app, has $1.2 million in a seed round from East Ventures, Klab Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, and other investors.

See also:

Focused on real-time editing

The Unda messaging app was developed for the exchange of video messages. But the team realized it would be a matter before the market was saturated, so they began differentiating themselves with new technology, according to Pocket Supernova CEO and co-founder Oscar Yasser Noriega.

Since early 2014, the team has been focusing on adding real-time editing to the app, which allows users to add animated GIFs to selfie videos and share them with friends or other users via social network services. In addition, users can communicate with each other in the VideoSelfie community, which is similar to Instagram.

Noriega explained:

oscar-noriega_portrait
CEO Oscar Yasser Noriega

Many users take a video clip with their smartphone and send it a friend with a message. While video editing is getting popular, most apps have yet to adopt traditional ways, which lets users follow a step-by-step process for recording, editing, and adding filters. But VideoSelfie allows you to manage all these tasks in real-time in one screen and share the completed video clip instantly.

The VideoSelfie app is available in English, Japanese, and Spanish. Some 50% of their users are in North America, 25% from Southeast Asia, and the rest from other regions. While the app provides the same functions regardless of geographical conditions, some content or functions may be offered in specific markets. They will share a function focused on the Japanese market when it becomes available.

Taking selfie videos like ‘purikura’ photos

Looking at their user demographics, girls aged from 12 to 19 years are the majority. The penetration of the “selfie culture” varies from market to market. Selfies are popular in North America and Southeast Asia, but not in Japan. To be widely accepted, the team believes that they need to educate people so that they will take selfie videos like they do in taking purikura photos with friends.

The team plans to generate revenue by selling additional filters and effects as in-app purchases, but it could also license its technology to bigger companies as another avenue for monetization.

With the real-time editing, the VideoSelfie app may lower the psychological hurdle that a user might have in conventional video editing methods. The app may become popular among young Japanese girls if they can easily create cute video clips with it.

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Japan’s BHI launches mobile apps that prevent info overload in messaging

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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Japanese startup BHI announced today that it has launched a suite of mobile apps called Swingnow, which will prevent information overload in messaging. The company is based in Tokyo, but they have made these apps available on the iTunes app store in English-speaking and Nordic countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. The Swingnow suite is comprising of three mobile apps of Swingmail (e-mail), Swingbook (contact book), and Swingcal (calendar). Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that helps reduce information overload and clutter. The app aggregates messages from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and calls from phone and FaceTime, so that you have everything in one inbox. Swingmail will filter out junk, spam, and messages that don’t require your immediate attention, so that you can stay focused and only receive messages from people that are important. Swingbook is a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated with the Swingmail app. Based on past messaging patterns, current time and location, Swingbook learns, predicts and suggests the most likely contacts who you would want to get in touch with at any given moment. Swingcal is a minimalistic calendar app that thinks about your contacts. The app focuses…

himukashi-inoue-fagelstedt
From the left: Yasuhiro Himukashi (CEO), Jun Inoue (CMO), and Emelie Fågelstedt (public relations)

Japanese startup BHI announced today that it has launched a suite of mobile apps called Swingnow, which will prevent information overload in messaging. The company is based in Tokyo, but they have made these apps available on the iTunes app store in English-speaking and Nordic countries such as the US, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.

The Swingnow suite is comprising of three mobile apps of Swingmail (e-mail), Swingbook (contact book), and Swingcal (calendar).

Swingmail is a minimalistic inbox and reply-only app that helps reduce information overload and clutter. The app aggregates messages from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and calls from phone and FaceTime, so that you have everything in one inbox. Swingmail will filter out junk, spam, and messages that don’t require your immediate attention, so that you can stay focused and only receive messages from people that are important.

Swingbook is a prioritizing contact list seamlessly integrated with the Swingmail app. Based on past messaging patterns, current time and location, Swingbook learns, predicts and suggests the most likely contacts who you would want to get in touch with at any given moment.

Swingcal is a minimalistic calendar app that thinks about your contacts. The app focuses on the agendas that you have with someone up to a week in the future.

BHI launched Swingmail out of these three apps late last year. In addition to developing two other apps in the suite, they abandoned the previous version of the Swingmail app and opted to develop it from scratch again for giving users a better experience.

See also:

Regarding the geographical limitation on the availability of these apps, I had assumed that it was because of a language-dependent algorithm in filtering messages. But BHI CMO Jun Inoue explained why this assumption was mistaken:

We are a startup, so our resources are limited. Filtering or analyzing algorithms used in our apps properly work in any language. But if we want to market to the global market, we need to optimize the user interface of the apps in every different language market to fit the preference of locals.

Compared to the Japanese market, we understand there’s obviously a larger potential in the entire English-speaking market. We know English is not a mother tongue for Nordic people, but they don’t feel uncomfortable using apps with an English-language interface. That’s why we started with these countries.

If the apps can receive good reaction in the countries where they have just launched, they will expand availability to other countries like Canada, South Africa, and Singapore. Based on feedback from users, they may also develop an Android version.

BHI fundraised an undisclosed amount of investment in a series A round from an undisclosed Japanese investor in April this year.

swingnow_screenshots

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Japanese hardware prototyping platform PocketDuino launches on Indiegogo

Yasunori Okajima Yasunori Okajima
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See the original story in Japanese. PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign. What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code. With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture. Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender. The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware…

pocketduino5

See the original story in Japanese.

PocketDuino is an Android-compatible circuit board based on the Arduino prototyping platform. The product was developed by Japanese engineers and recently launched an Indiegogo campaign.

What’s unique about this circuit board is the ease with which you can connect external sensor devices. For example, if you have a library to control an alcohol sensor, you can have the board obtain data from the sensor by writing as little as three-line of Java code.

With PocketDuino, developers can easily add external sensors to integrate with Android handsets. The PocketDuino team wants to enable software developers to create apps linked with such sensor devices without requiring too much knowledge about hardware architecture.

pocketduino2

Similar to the Arduino, you can use a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux PC to load your code to the PocketDuino circuit board. Or you can load code from an Android handset using the Arduino development environment Codebender.

pocketduino3

The team wants to fill the gap between software and hardware with this product, enabling more people to launch their hardware products and startups. They plan to launch a business in the US if PocketDuino can successfully close this campaign, and they hope to invent more hardware products addressing various problems.

The campaign will run until the end of June. You can receive e-mail updates about further product development if you invest $1 in the project. If you invest $39, you can get a PocketDuino unit, and for $55 you can get a PocketDuino with an alcohol sensor. Early bird discounts are also available.

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Yahoo Japan’s public transit app surpasses 10M downloads

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th. The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan. Via Venture Now

yahoo-transit

Yesterday Yahoo Japan announced that its Yahoo Transit application, which tells you directions and transit times for walking, trains, buses, and planes, has surpassed the 10 million downloads milestone as of May 18th.

The app was initially released for iOS way back in 2008, and for Android back in 2011. It consistently ranks among the top tier of apps in iOS’s navigation category and Google Play’s transportation category in Japan.

Via Venture Now

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Fujitsu to offer mobile health support services to women in Japan

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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NTT Docomo recently unveiled its new summer smartphone lineup, and included among its new handsets was the Arrows NX F–05F. Made by Fujitsu, this will be one of many Fujitsu phones that will feature a new Karada Life Pregnancy Support app targeting female users. According to Fujitsu today, the service will be available starting May 30th here in Japan. The application was developed by Fujitsu using APIs from Luna Luna, a service that millions of women in Japan use to be more aware of their menstrual cycles, by recording period timing and body temperature. In short, a range of services will be provided by both Fujitsu and Luna Luna, including estimation of menstruation and ovulation times (based on data from the previous two months) and lifestyle advice. There is also convenient body temperature management that makes use of wireless and automatic transmission of data from a thermometer [1] to smartphones (pictured below). Our readers may recall that we also saw Ateam release an app for women trying to get pregnant late last year. But it’s good to see more companies like Fujitsu get involved to provide more options. It’s interesting to watch more and more companies in Japan strive to…

fujitsu-karada

NTT Docomo recently unveiled its new summer smartphone lineup, and included among its new handsets was the Arrows NX F–05F. Made by Fujitsu, this will be one of many Fujitsu phones that will feature a new Karada Life Pregnancy Support app targeting female users. According to Fujitsu today, the service will be available starting May 30th here in Japan.

The application was developed by Fujitsu using APIs from Luna Luna, a service that millions of women in Japan use to be more aware of their menstrual cycles, by recording period timing and body temperature.

In short, a range of services will be provided by both Fujitsu and Luna Luna, including estimation of menstruation and ovulation times (based on data from the previous two months) and lifestyle advice. There is also convenient body temperature management that makes use of wireless and automatic transmission of data from a thermometer [1] to smartphones (pictured below).

Our readers may recall that we also saw Ateam release an app for women trying to get pregnant late last year. But it’s good to see more companies like Fujitsu get involved to provide more options.

It’s interesting to watch more and more companies in Japan strive to serve female users. Just last month, for example, Amazon Japan launched a new female-focused store front to specifically target women and mothers.

fujitsu-karada-2

  1. Specifically, the Terumo Corporation’s WOMAN °C W520DZ thermometer, which is ostensibly not included.  ↩

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Japan-based Wantedly brings its social job platform to Android

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile. At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that. Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-android

Back in February we told you about the release of a new iOS application from Japan-based Wantedly, allows you to access the startup’s online social job platform on mobile.

At the time, the team mentioned to us that they’d like to do a version for Android as well. And just after the iOS launch, it I understand they brought in a new engineer to do just that.

Skip to today and Wantedly for Android is now available as a free download from Google Play. I encourage you to check it out.

wantedly-a wantedly-a

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Japanese homescreen customization app breaks through 25M downloads, enjoys international success

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16. Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers. As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon. Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.

cocoppa

United Inc, the Japanese maker of smartphone customization app Cocoppa, announced today that their flagship app has surpassed 25 million downloads, as of May 16.

Cocoppa is a standout Japan success story in that it has quite successfully won fans in overseas markets, with 84% of their users from outside Japan. The service originally started back in July of 2012, averaging just over a million new downloads a month. As for user engagement, Cocoppa has seen 600,000 screen icons contributed to its platform, as well as 130,000 wallpapers.

As you can see in the chart below, Cocoppa’s user base skews towards iOS. The Android version of the app has only been around for about a year (launched in May 2013), so expect this to be a more balanced distribution quite soon.

Recently Cocoppa was challenged on its home turf by mobile giant Line, which launched its own homescreen customization app, Line Deco. That application is doing respectably well in major Asian markets, so this could be an interesting battle to watch in the coming months.

cocoppa

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