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How StickerMe is riding the chat app wave in Asia

Rick Martin 2013.07.08

We previously featured the very clever StickerMe app, developed by the folks at Tokyo-based Motion Portrait. In the past the company has been best known for its fun facial modification apps like Zombie Booth or Sumo Booth. But interestingly their technological expertise in facial recognition has put them in the unique position of being able to make a great sticker creation app. Their app lets users take a picture of someone’s face and easily transform it into a customized sticker that can then be sent via Line, Kakao, or even on more traditional platforms like Facebook or email. Motion Portrait’s advantage is that the resultant stickers can even include changes to your face, like adding a smile to an unsmiling mouth, for example. Asia Loves Stickers So far the app has done extremely well in its first two months, picking up 1.8 million downloads during that span, mostly from around the Asia region. The countries that account for the most downloads are Japan, Thailand, and China, but it is also popular in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Of course that is all just on iOS so far, so there’s lots of potential for growth. To date, the platform…

We previously featured the very clever StickerMe app, developed by the folks at Tokyo-based Motion Portrait. In the past the company has been best known for its fun facial modification apps like Zombie Booth or Sumo Booth. But interestingly their technological expertise in facial recognition has put them in the unique position of being able to make a great sticker creation app.

Their app lets users take a picture of someone’s face and easily transform it into a customized sticker that can then be sent via Line, Kakao, or even on more traditional platforms like Facebook or email. Motion Portrait’s advantage is that the resultant stickers can even include changes to your face, like adding a smile to an unsmiling mouth, for example.

Asia Loves Stickers

So far the app has done extremely well in its first two months, picking up 1.8 million downloads during that span, mostly from around the Asia region. The countries that account for the most downloads are Japan, Thailand, and China, but it is also popular in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Of course that is all just on iOS so far, so there’s lots of potential for growth. To date, the platform that most favors StickerMe is Line with about 45% of total shares taking place on that platform. China’s WeChat is not far behind with 33%.

The app’s producer, Ryuhei Sadoshima, explained to us that that because most of the Asian countries interested in StickerMe are dominated by Android, they have even higher expectations for their upcoming Google Play release, set for later this month. Motion Portrait is targeting 10 million total downloads this year, with the hope of about 8 million downloads on Google Play.

The Next Step

motion-portrait-stickerme — CFO Takahashi Yoshimura, Producer Ryuhei Sadoshima

New stamps are on the way for StickerMe, and additional designs will be more frequent in the future. There are even plans for localized stamps for different regions, which is smart especially in places like China. A new dual/group mode is on the way too, where you can add faces of multiple friends to a sticker template.

In terms of monetization, I understand that so far in-app purchases have not performed so well – but the company is looking to do sponsored stickers in collaboration with certain companies. Motion Portrait has done lots of B2B business in Japan in the past, and they are planning to expand into sponsored stickers in the coming months.

It’s interesting to see a service like this one take advantage of the popularity of mobile chat apps on this way. And it will be really interesting to see what happens with StickerMe over the next year.

If you’d like to check out StickerMe for iOS, you can get it for free on the App Store. Or you can see our video demo of the app below.

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Inventor of Japanese P2P file-sharing software passes away at age 42

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.08

Tokyo-based distributed computing company Skeed announced [pdf] yesterday that the company’s founder and chief innovation officer Dr. Isamu Kaneko has passed away due to heart attack on Saturday. He was 42 years old. Dr. Kaneko has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where he invented P2P file-sharing software Winny in 2003. In 2004, there were many file leak incidents at Japanese companies which may have been caused by people using the software. He was previously arrested under the suspicion of abetting copyright disputes despite the fact that he just invented the software. In 2011, the Japanese supreme court finally judged that he was not guilty. He recently co-founded Skeed, which focuses on developing P2P-based content delivery technology. His colleague recently pitched at ICT Spring 2013, an annual tech conference that took place in Luxembourg last month. Our thoughts are with his family and colleagues. Rest in peace.

Tokyo-based distributed computing company Skeed announced [pdf] yesterday that the company’s founder and chief innovation officer Dr. Isamu Kaneko has passed away due to heart attack on Saturday. He was 42 years old.

Dr. Kaneko has been working as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where he invented P2P file-sharing software Winny in 2003. In 2004, there were many file leak incidents at Japanese companies which may have been caused by people using the software. He was previously arrested under the suspicion of abetting copyright disputes despite the fact that he just invented the software. In 2011, the Japanese supreme court finally judged that he was not guilty.

He recently co-founded Skeed, which focuses on developing P2P-based content delivery technology. His colleague recently pitched at ICT Spring 2013, an annual tech conference that took place in Luxembourg last month.

Our thoughts are with his family and colleagues. Rest in peace.

news

Japanese television network claims over 1M participants in interactive TV game

Rick Martin 2013.07.08

Last week we told you a little about TeamLab’s social instrument technology being implemented during Nippon Television Network’s 60th anniversary special. That event took place this past weekend, and the idea was to turn the scheduled musical performance from boy-band Arashi into a nation-wide interactive rhythm game where fans could use their mobile phones, computers, or even their TV remote controls to keep up with the beat visualized on screen. It appears that in terms of participation the game was a success. The network claims that 1.3 million viewers took part in the game – which is more than 1% of the entire Japanese population. (Of course, given how fabricated Japanese pop is these days, I don’t think it’s beyond belief that this number might be fabricated too!) Admittedly, the game play was ridiculously simple, but it was certainly a fun step in making live TV broadcasts more interactive. I wonder if we might see something like this appear in a Superbowl halftime show in the future? TeamLab has been responsible for some amazing digital feats in the past, and we encourage you to check out their website to learn more about past exhibitions and projects. Update July 10: We…

Last week we told you a little about TeamLab’s social instrument technology being implemented during Nippon Television Network’s 60th anniversary special. That event took place this past weekend, and the idea was to turn the scheduled musical performance from boy-band Arashi into a nation-wide interactive rhythm game where fans could use their mobile phones, computers, or even their TV remote controls to keep up with the beat visualized on screen.

It appears that in terms of participation the game was a success. The network claims that 1.3 million viewers took part in the game – which is more than 1% of the entire Japanese population. (Of course, given how fabricated Japanese pop is these days, I don’t think it’s beyond belief that this number might be fabricated too!)

Admittedly, the game play was ridiculously simple, but it was certainly a fun step in making live TV broadcasts more interactive. I wonder if we might see something like this appear in a Superbowl halftime show in the future?

TeamLab has been responsible for some amazing digital feats in the past, and we encourage you to check out their website to learn more about past exhibitions and projects.

Update July 10: We followed up with the folks at TeamLab to find out their reactions to the performance. While I was a little skeptical about the numbers Nippon Television Network was claiming, TeamLab says they’re accurate, and points us to further stats from the live event over at ntv.co.jp/musicday/result. We’ve translated it below.

So what’s the next step for this interactive TV technology? A TeamLab rep says they’d love to further evolve it, and they’ve gotten lots of new ideas as a result of this particular experience. As for future events, TeamLab tells me their door is always open to new clients and interesting new projects!

teamlab_game — Annotated translations by SD

news

Panasonic’s new electric bicycle for moms combines practicality and design

SCORE 2,623

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.06

Panasonic Cycle Tech announced that it will launch an electric bicyle designed for three people — a parent and two small children. It’s called Gyutto. In Japan, especially in Tokyo where trains dominate as daily transportation, many moms turn to electric bicycles for getting around. If you walk around the streets of Tokyo, you’ll notice many women on bicycles with a child in the front or back. With the Gyutto’s sleek and modern design, moms can look stylish while getting her errands done too. The electric bicycle has an 8.9Ah battery which provides enough power to go for about 26 kilometers. It also has a feature that counts and displays your total calories burned. Gyutto comes in three color variations and is available for 133,000 yen (or about $1,330). The bicycle looks pretty sharp, it would be a great addition to any family — suitable for both moms and dads. In Japan, the very first electric bicycle appeared back in 1993. The market has grown ever since, and in 2010, the number of shipments exceeded 380,000 nationwide — outweighing even motorcycles in popularity. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake had an impact on the market as well. People needed affordable transportation and…

Panasonic Cycle Tech announced that it will launch an electric bicyle designed for three people — a parent and two small children. It’s called Gyutto. In Japan, especially in Tokyo where trains dominate as daily transportation, many moms turn to electric bicycles for getting around.

If you walk around the streets of Tokyo, you’ll notice many women on bicycles with a child in the front or back. With the Gyutto’s sleek and modern design, moms can look stylish while getting her errands done too.

The electric bicycle has an 8.9Ah battery which provides enough power to go for about 26 kilometers. It also has a feature that counts and displays your total calories burned. Gyutto comes in three color variations and is available for 133,000 yen (or about $1,330). The bicycle looks pretty sharp, it would be a great addition to any family — suitable for both moms and dads.

In Japan, the very first electric bicycle appeared back in 1993. The market has grown ever since, and in 2010, the number of shipments exceeded 380,000 nationwide — outweighing even motorcycles in popularity. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake had an impact on the market as well. People needed affordable transportation and turned to electric bicycles. In 2012, the number of electric bicycles sold grew by 24% in comparison to the year before.

news

Japanese startup Fluxflex launches easy-to-install card payment solution

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.04

Led by Japanese serial entrepreneur Kei Kubo, FluxFlex is a startup working out of PariSoma, a notable co-working space in San Francisco. It recently announced the launch of WebPay, an easy-to-install, freemium card payment solution for Japanese e-commerce companies. The service was previously made available last April to a limited number of developers for testing purposes. Compared to conventional solutions, the WebPay service is not difficult to install, and its API is compatible with Stripe, a leading payment processor in the US. Because cross-border transactions are not permitted under international card transaction rules, WebPay aspires to fill card transaction needs for web payment services in the Japanese market. In order to give developers an easy-to-install interface for payments, the startup has partnered with GMO Payment Gateway, one of the oldest and biggest payment processing companies in Japan. Upon its official launch, the company also received an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway. In terms of use cases, Japanese startups such as accounting SaaS Freee and subscription-based Japanese sake delivery service Sakelife are using Fluxflex’s solution to fulfill their payment needs.

Led by Japanese serial entrepreneur Kei Kubo, FluxFlex is a startup working out of PariSoma, a notable co-working space in San Francisco. It recently announced the launch of WebPay, an easy-to-install, freemium card payment solution for Japanese e-commerce companies. The service was previously made available last April to a limited number of developers for testing purposes.

Compared to conventional solutions, the WebPay service is not difficult to install, and its API is compatible with Stripe, a leading payment processor in the US. Because cross-border transactions are not permitted under international card transaction rules, WebPay aspires to fill card transaction needs for web payment services in the Japanese market.

In order to give developers an easy-to-install interface for payments, the startup has partnered with GMO Payment Gateway, one of the oldest and biggest payment processing companies in Japan. Upon its official launch, the company also received an undisclosed amount of funding from CyberAgent Ventures, Architype, and GMO Payment Gateway.

In terms of use cases, Japanese startups such as accounting SaaS Freee and subscription-based Japanese sake delivery service Sakelife are using Fluxflex’s solution to fulfill their payment needs.

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Puzzle & Dragons not cute enough for you? Try Emotipon

Rick Martin 2013.07.04

We previously wrote about Japanese startup Quan Inc., which in addition to producing its own Lounge chat app, has produced a cute sticker app for a major Thai telco. But yesterday the company kicked its ‘repertoire of cute’ up a notch by release a new mobile game called Emotipon. In short, the title is sort of like GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, only it’s far simpler, and far more cute. Like P&D this is an orb-matching game, but here you just need to trace out lines of matching orbs with your finger. It’s almost painfully easy. And by matching more orbs, you can launch a more powerful attack against your enemy. As you progress, you collect ‘helper’ characters that you can take into battle with you, each with special abilities that you can use (just like P&D). I expect Quan must be targeting younger kids with Emotipon, because I think few adults would choose something like this over P&D. But surprisingly it’s launching in English as well as Japanese, so there may be opportunity for it to pick up fans outside Japan, especially in markets around Asia where cute Japanese apps do best. If you’d like to check out Emotipon, you…

We previously wrote about Japanese startup Quan Inc., which in addition to producing its own Lounge chat app, has produced a cute sticker app for a major Thai telco.

But yesterday the company kicked its ‘repertoire of cute’ up a notch by release a new mobile game called Emotipon. In short, the title is sort of like GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, only it’s far simpler, and far more cute.

Like P&D this is an orb-matching game, but here you just need to trace out lines of matching orbs with your finger. It’s almost painfully easy. And by matching more orbs, you can launch a more powerful attack against your enemy. As you progress, you collect ‘helper’ characters that you can take into battle with you, each with special abilities that you can use (just like P&D).

I expect Quan must be targeting younger kids with Emotipon, because I think few adults would choose something like this over P&D. But surprisingly it’s launching in English as well as Japanese, so there may be opportunity for it to pick up fans outside Japan, especially in markets around Asia where cute Japanese apps do best.

If you’d like to check out Emotipon, you can get it for free over on the App Store (via Gamebiz)

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

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Japanese e-commerce platform provider Base introduces new iPhone app

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.03

See the original story in Japanese. Base is an e-commerce platform provider startup from Tokyo. It was born out of Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by serial entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. In contrast with their competitor Stores.jp, the Base team has been pretty quiet recently. But they have released a new iOS app today, which allows merchants to build and manage their online shops entirely on mobile. In addition, the company has added a new feature called ‘Base Curation,’ which has an interface resembling an online shopping mall, curating featured shops. It displays users’ shops which have been selected by the company’s management, and if you would to like them to feature your shop in the menu, you can make a request via the dashboard. I asked the startup’s CEO Yuta Tsuruoka if the curation menu is a special business strategy for Base — but he said that this wasn’t quite the intention, explaining: Unlike other mall platforms (which have many tenant merchants), our service does not provide a way to find a specific shop on the platform. We want to see how we can encourage merchants to set up their online shop on our platform. When you launch…

See the original story in Japanese.

Base is an e-commerce platform provider startup from Tokyo. It was born out of Project Liverty, a tech savvy team led by serial entrepreneur Kazuma Ieiri. In contrast with their competitor Stores.jp, the Base team has been pretty quiet recently. But they have released a new iOS app today, which allows merchants to build and manage their online shops entirely on mobile.

In addition, the company has added a new feature called ‘Base Curation,’ which has an interface resembling an online shopping mall, curating featured shops. It displays users’ shops which have been selected by the company’s management, and if you would to like them to feature your shop in the menu, you can make a request via the dashboard.

I asked the startup’s CEO Yuta Tsuruoka if the curation menu is a special business strategy for Base — but he said that this wasn’t quite the intention, explaining:

Unlike other mall platforms (which have many tenant merchants), our service does not provide a way to find a specific shop on the platform. We want to see how we can encourage merchants to set up their online shop on our platform. When you launch an app, it shows you a number of online shops where you can quickly jump in to purchase something you want, but you can also [just as] easily establish your own shop from the menu.

Placing pictures of products, changing design, inventory management, etc. – all these tasks can be completed with the smartphone app because we really want to give more people opportunities to build up their own “economic block”.

Base is not trying to be a big e-commerce portal, but a rather platform where people can easily repeat transactions, buying and selling items by leveraging their social connections, and accelerating long-tail businesses.

According to Mr. Tsuruoka, almost 60% of their purchasing traffic comes from mobile devices.

Of course, all these updates are very likely a direct result of Ieiri’s own philosophies. I asked him how they plan to compete against various competitors, including major e-commerce platforms, shopping cart ASPs, and other similar services. He answered me directly, not hiding his intentions of taking the fight to his competitors:

They are elephants or capybaras [1], but we are mere ants, in contrast. For ants, even if you join forces with capybaras, there’s no way you can defeat elephants. Therefore, you must dig up the ground so that you might trip up the elephants. Understand?

The Base team is expecting to see 500,000 downloads of their iOS app by the end of this month. Let’s stay tuned to see how they do!

The capybara is the largest rodent in the world according to Wikipedia. Editor’s note: Ieiri’s metaphor is a little strange, but it seems capybaras might be a less obscure animal among Japanese people because it is cute, and has been featured in some TV commercials. ↩

news

3 Japanese VCs team up to establish new mobile gaming studio

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.03

See the original story in Japanese. Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company. This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on. We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV. It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers! The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩ The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company.

This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on.

We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV.

It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers!

The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩
The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩

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Book discovery service raises $200,000 from Japanese investors

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.03

Booklap is a handy service that helps you find good books. It was created by Tokyo-based startup Prosbee, which announced today that it has raised 20 million yen ($200,000) from Incubate Fund, Voyage Ventures, and Genuine Startups [1]. This follows the previous funding of 3 million yen (about $32,000) from Incubate Fund last July. The service has two ways to help you discover new books: The first method is based on your interests, pulled from ‘social graphs’ like your Facebook profile. The other way is by presenting quotes from books that impressed other users. Since its beta launch back in June of 2012, they have built up a decent userbase, with recent changes to their interface, adding features intended to boost growth. CEO Reo Kasai explains: We reflected back on our original goal, when our mission was to visualize the impressions of book readers. We created a UX map and a detailed profile of how a typical user behaves, and considered which parts needed to be modified or refined. As a result, a featured image behind an overlaying quote is now on the book recommendation page. The image is referenced from the book publisher’s website using Bing image search API. They…

Booklap is a handy service that helps you find good books. It was created by Tokyo-based startup Prosbee, which announced today that it has raised 20 million yen ($200,000) from Incubate Fund, Voyage Ventures, and Genuine Startups [1]. This follows the previous funding of 3 million yen (about $32,000) from Incubate Fund last July.

The service has two ways to help you discover new books: The first method is based on your interests, pulled from ‘social graphs’ like your Facebook profile. The other way is by presenting quotes from books that impressed other users. Since its beta launch back in June of 2012, they have built up a decent userbase, with recent changes to their interface, adding features intended to boost growth. CEO Reo Kasai explains:

We reflected back on our original goal, when our mission was to visualize the impressions of book readers. We created a UX map and a detailed profile of how a typical user behaves, and considered which parts needed to be modified or refined.

As a result, a featured image behind an overlaying quote is now on the book recommendation page. The image is referenced from the book publisher’s website using Bing image search API.

They also added a feature that allows users to organize a reading circle, with a discussion around a specific book. You can designate a start and finish date to let participating users to know when to read the book, and subsequently they’ll be able to organize a virtual meet-up online to talk about their impressions.

The company is currently preparing to release two mobile apps. One is the Booklap Camera app (for iOS only), which has an OCR feature and helps users to scan a memorable quote and post it to Booklap. The other one is the Booklap mobile app (for Android and iOS), which gives you an easier access to the service and helps you share your reading experience without the need to be seated in front of a PC.

Their revenue streams are still limited, with banner and affiliates ads driving user traffic to sites where books can be purchased. But the company is focusing on user acquisition first, and will explore global business expansion later on.

Genuine Startups is an investment fund spun off from Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan. ↩

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Japanese MOOC startup raises $1.5 million from investors

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.02

See the original story in Japanese. Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012. Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s. With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies. In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy. We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model: With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make…

See the original story in Japanese.

Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012.

Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s.

With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies.

In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy.

We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model:

With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make our service into a platform, where we can consider possible monetization models such as charging a commission fee for item sales.

We need to adopt a progressive business model. We’ll add more attractive features for our paying users, and focus on acquiring more users, and improve our conversion and retention rates.

Schoo is expecting to surpass a million users by this December. Stay tuned to see whether the startup can disrupt the conventional concepts in this space in Japan.

That’s a translation, and obviously not really very catchy in English. ↩

News

How StickerMe is riding the chat app wave in Asia

Asia Loves Stickers

The Next Step

Inventor of Japanese P2P file-sharing software passes away at age 42

Japanese television network claims over 1M participants in interactive TV game

Panasonic’s new electric bicycle for moms combines practicality and design

Japanese startup Fluxflex launches easy-to-install card payment solution

Puzzle & Dragons not cute enough for you? Try Emotipon

Japanese e-commerce platform provider Base introduces new iPhone app

3 Japanese VCs team up to establish new mobile gaming studio

Book discovery service raises $200,000 from Japanese investors

Japanese MOOC startup raises $1.5 million from investors

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