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Japanese homescreen decoration app hits 12M downloads, partners with Sanrio

Junya Mori 2013.08.01

Based on our previously published Japanese article CocoPPa is a popular homescreen decoration app from Japan that also has some handy social functions. It is operated by United Co. Ltd., and yesterday that company announced that the app has broken though the 12 million downloads milestone. That’s an impressive feat considering that the app just launched about a year ago in July of 2012. What’s remarkable about CocoPPa is that about 83% of its downloads have been from overseas, making it a remarkable success story among Japanese companies that have often have difficulties looking abroad. It was just a little over a month ago that the app surpassed the 10 million downloads mark, and it’s release on Google Play back in late May, picking up the slack for slowing iOS downloads, as you can see in the chart above. CocoPPa also recently became available on the Amazon Android app store as well as the Opera Mobile Store just a few days ago. On a related note, it was announced earlier this month that CocoPPa would be seeking third-party content providers for partnerships and collaborations. And now Sanrio has decided to participate, bringing well-known IP like Hello Kitty, My Melody, and…

Based on our previously published Japanese article

CocoPPa is a popular homescreen decoration app from Japan that also has some handy social functions. It is operated by United Co. Ltd., and yesterday that company announced that the app has broken though the 12 million downloads milestone. That’s an impressive feat considering that the app just launched about a year ago in July of 2012.

What’s remarkable about CocoPPa is that about 83% of its downloads have been from overseas, making it a remarkable success story among Japanese companies that have often have difficulties looking abroad.

It was just a little over a month ago that the app surpassed the 10 million downloads mark, and it’s release on Google Play back in late May, picking up the slack for slowing iOS downloads, as you can see in the chart above. CocoPPa also recently became available on the Amazon Android app store as well as the Opera Mobile Store just a few days ago.

On a related note, it was announced earlier this month that CocoPPa would be seeking third-party content providers for partnerships and collaborations. And now Sanrio has decided to participate, bringing well-known IP like Hello Kitty, My Melody, and Little Twin Stars to feature in the app.

CocoPPa has previously partnered with Tokyo Otaku Mode on anime-themed homescreen decorations, and it also launched a Kanahei collaboration to mark its first anniversary back on July 19th.

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Japanese homescreen decoration app CocoPPa looks for new markets through Opera Mobile Store

Junya Mori 2013.07.29

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based United, the company behind smartphone homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today that it has introduced its popular app on the Opera Mobile Store. That store reaches various mobile platforms including Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. In addition to Apple’s AppStore and Google Play, the company has also introduced the app on Amazon’s Android AppStore earlier this month. The Opera Mobile Store doesn’t aim to defeat conventional app stores, but rather create an alternative for users who may have different needs in terms of mobile accessibility or location. The store has more then 45 million monthly downloads from over than 30 million users in 200 countries, with an especially strong presence in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia. CocoPPa launched on this app store to intensify its user acquisition in these countries in particular. For those who are not familiar with the app, our previous articles will show you how it works and why it’s currently trending. Or check out the video below for a quick overview.

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based United, the company behind smartphone homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today that it has introduced its popular app on the Opera Mobile Store. That store reaches various mobile platforms including Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. In addition to Apple’s AppStore and Google Play, the company has also introduced the app on Amazon’s Android AppStore earlier this month.

The Opera Mobile Store doesn’t aim to defeat conventional app stores, but rather create an alternative for users who may have different needs in terms of mobile accessibility or location. The store has more then 45 million monthly downloads from over than 30 million users in 200 countries, with an especially strong presence in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia.

CocoPPa launched on this app store to intensify its user acquisition in these countries in particular. For those who are not familiar with the app, our previous articles will show you how it works and why it’s currently trending. Or check out the video below for a quick overview.

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Can CocoPPa succeed overseas with a Japanese monetization model?

Junya Mori 2013.07.16

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based United, the company behind the popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today it has started looking for third-party content holders in the character business as possible collaborators. The startup is planning to provide app users with paid content this coming fall, and hopefully by partnering with many content holders it can accumulate a rich variety of wallpapers and icons. This will be CocoPPa’s first attempt at monetizing. Some of our readers may recall that the company has partnered with Tokyo Otaku Mode, bringing illustrations from TOM to their smartphone homescreens. This collaboration provided content for free, but in the future users will pay to get icons or wallpapers featuring popular characters from prominent IP holders. When we think about this kind of business models, Line Corporation’s paid stickers also come to mind. According to that company, sticker sales generated revenue worth 1.74 billion yen ($17.4 million) in the three months from January to March, accounting for 30% of their overall income, with most of that coming from users in Japan. But when we look at the demographics of CocoPPa users (see below), they are mostly women in their early 20s, with 86% of…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based United, the company behind the popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced today it has started looking for third-party content holders in the character business as possible collaborators.

The startup is planning to provide app users with paid content this coming fall, and hopefully by partnering with many content holders it can accumulate a rich variety of wallpapers and icons.

This will be CocoPPa’s first attempt at monetizing. Some of our readers may recall that the company has partnered with Tokyo Otaku Mode, bringing illustrations from TOM to their smartphone homescreens. This collaboration provided content for free, but in the future users will pay to get icons or wallpapers featuring popular characters from prominent IP holders.

When we think about this kind of business models, Line Corporation’s paid stickers also come to mind. According to that company, sticker sales generated revenue worth 1.74 billion yen ($17.4 million) in the three months from January to March, accounting for 30% of their overall income, with most of that coming from users in Japan. But when we look at the demographics of CocoPPa users (see below), they are mostly women in their early 20s, with 86% of users coming from outside Japan. So it will be interesting to see if such an internationally-focused app can generate revenue in this way.

CocoPPa has already surpassed 10 million downloads in its first 11 months since the launch. If you are interested in partnering with them, feel free to apply over on their website.

If you haven’t yet tried the CocoPPa app, it is available for free on iOS and Android. The iOS app was launched back on July 26th, 2012, and the Android version followed on May 29th, 2013. As of June 22nd, iOS accounts for 90% of the app’s total downloads.

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Japanese homescreen decoration app CocoPPa reaches 10M downloads, most from overseas

Junya Mori 2013.06.24

See the original story in Japanese. United, the startup behind popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced that the application has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The app was first launched just about 11 months ago. CocoPPa allows you to change your homescreen using icons or wallpapers posted by other users on the platform. It’s used in more than 150 countries worldwide, and a 87% of all the downloads have come from outside Japan. In addition to providing homescreen designs, the app lets you exchange messages with other users, and they often use Google Translate to enjoy chatting regardless of language gaps. The iOS version of CocoPPa was launched back in July of 2012, and its user growth was relatively slow for the rest of that year. But growth has been much stronger since this past February, and user numbers have tripled over a span of three months. And in May, the total number of the downloads surpassed 8 million. When we previously heard from the startup, they expressed the hope of reaching 30 million downloads by the end of this year. That’s a lofty goal, but 10 million is certainly a good first step! Some of our readers may recall that…

See the original story in Japanese.

United, the startup behind popular homescreen decoration app CocoPPa, announced that the application has surpassed 10 million downloads worldwide. The app was first launched just about 11 months ago.

CocoPPa allows you to change your homescreen using icons or wallpapers posted by other users on the platform. It’s used in more than 150 countries worldwide, and a 87% of all the downloads have come from outside Japan. In addition to providing homescreen designs, the app lets you exchange messages with other users, and they often use Google Translate to enjoy chatting regardless of language gaps.

The iOS version of CocoPPa was launched back in July of 2012, and its user growth was relatively slow for the rest of that year. But growth has been much stronger since this past February, and user numbers have tripled over a span of three months. And in May, the total number of the downloads surpassed 8 million.

When we previously heard from the startup, they expressed the hope of reaching 30 million downloads by the end of this year. That’s a lofty goal, but 10 million is certainly a good first step!

Some of our readers may recall that the startup also partnered with Tokyo Otaku Mode last week. United also recently started hiring in an effort to accelerate its business expansion to the global market.

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CocoPPa partners with Tokyo Otaku Mode on anime-themed decorations for your smartphone homescreen

Junya Mori 2013.06.22

See the original story in Japanese. CocoPPa, a smartphone wallpaper/icon decoration app from Japanese web conglomerate United, has tied up with Tokyo Otaku Mode (TOM) to allow Cocoppa users to bring their favorite illustrations from TOM to their smartphone homescreens. This is the first such collaborative business endeavor for Cocoppa. Both Cocoppa and TOM are popular sites among young people, and both have succeeded in spreading Japanese culture around the world. For TOM, this partnership gives its users more chances to show off their works as well. CocoPPa recently surpassed 8 million downloads worldwide, and TOM has accumulated more than 12.5 million likes on its Facebook. We expect that this partnership between two globally influential startups can bring about great results and more awareness about the two companies worldwide.. On a related note, we reported earlier today that has also just released a new smartphone app called Tokyo Otaku Mode mini. It’s a busy week for the up-and-coming company!

See the original story in Japanese.

CocoPPa, a smartphone wallpaper/icon decoration app from Japanese web conglomerate United, has tied up with Tokyo Otaku Mode (TOM) to allow Cocoppa users to bring their favorite illustrations from TOM to their smartphone homescreens.

This is the first such collaborative business endeavor for Cocoppa. Both Cocoppa and TOM are popular sites among young people, and both have succeeded in spreading Japanese culture around the world. For TOM, this partnership gives its users more chances to show off their works as well.

CocoPPa recently surpassed 8 million downloads worldwide, and TOM has accumulated more than 12.5 million likes on its Facebook. We expect that this partnership between two globally influential startups can bring about great results and more awareness about the two companies worldwide..

On a related note, we reported earlier today that has also just released a new smartphone app called Tokyo Otaku Mode mini. It’s a busy week for the up-and-coming company!

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5 cute Japanese apps that let you customize your mobile’s homescreen

SCORE 12,580

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.05.31

This is part of our cute Japanese apps series (RSS), examining a trend of ‘kawaii’ success stories emerging from Japan’s mobile space. If look at many of the popular mobile services used by Japanese girls, there is often some sort of customization feature. On the popular girls mobile blogging platform Decolog, which has a whopping 6.5 billion monthly page views, lets users customize their blogs using original photos or illustrations. This very flexible customization feature is one of the reasons for the service’s big success. Of course, these days the mobile homescreen is another area where girls want customization. Here is a list of five apps from Japan that allow users to do this in a very cute way. CocoPPa ¶ CocoPPa is a collaborative mobile customization platform that lets users all over the world create and collaborate on app icons and wallpapers, with many of its existing designs falling into the cute category. CocoPPa was released last July and since then it has been downloaded over 7.5 million times about half of that coming from the US. Readers may recall that the startup gave a pitch at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo. CocoPPa is availabe on iOS…

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

If look at many of the popular mobile services used by Japanese girls, there is often some sort of customization feature. On the popular girls mobile blogging platform Decolog, which has a whopping 6.5 billion monthly page views, lets users customize their blogs using original photos or illustrations. This very flexible customization feature is one of the reasons for the service’s big success. Of course, these days the mobile homescreen is another area where girls want customization. Here is a list of five apps from Japan that allow users to do this in a very cute way.

CocoPPa ¶

CocoPPa is a collaborative mobile customization platform that lets users all over the world create and collaborate on app icons and wallpapers, with many of its existing designs falling into the cute category. CocoPPa was released last July and since then it has been downloaded over 7.5 million times about half of that coming from the US. Readers may recall that the startup gave a pitch at the recent Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo.

CocoPPa is availabe on iOS and Andoird, and on the web.

Touch Icon Creator ¶

Touch Icon Creator is a very simple app that allows users to create original app icons using pictures in their photo library. So for example, you can create app icons with a photo of friends or family. I can also imagine this being useful for people who read celebrity blogs on the major blogging platform Ameblo. Mainstream users may not read online news media very often, but I think many read blogs by friends and celebrities. Users can create shortcuts on their homescreen and set customized photos that appropriately match the blog.

The app is available on iOS for 85 yen.

Icon Whip ¶

Icon Whip provides over 30 varieties of cute, original icons such as Hello Kitty or cookie shaped icons. The icons all have a sort of hand-drawn style, and that makes your homescreen look very unique. Some icons can be unlocked by sharing them Twitter or Facebook, and over on the Deco Market, there are premium icons that can be bought.

Icon Whip is available for Android.

+Icon ¶

+Icon is for those who really wants to unleash their creativity. The app offers things like frames and symbols so that you can create your own icon very easily. There are also designs provided in collaboration with popular apparel brands like X-girl and Milkfed.

The app is available on iOS.

Nuko Shortcut icon ¶

This one is for all the cat lovers out there. Nuko Shortcut Icon allows you to change your homescreen icons to Japanese-style cats illustrations. Nuko apparently means ‘cats’ (Neco in Japanese) in the internet world, although I had to look this up.

The app is available on Android with both free and paid versions. There are over 41 icons provided in the paid version.

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Japanese startup CocoPPa lets you collaboratively create the cutest iPhone homescreen

Rick Martin 2013.05.24

This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan. To read about other startups who pitched, you can read our other reports here. Accounting startup CFO won the Infinity Ventures Launchpad event with Freee, its financial service for small business. But it was followed in second place by CocoPPa, a very clever service that lets you customize you iPhone icons and homescreen. While there are many services out there that let you do such customizations to your mobile, where CocoPPa is unique is that it offers a platform where users around the world can share and collaborate on these kind of designs. So for example, if a person in Japan creates a cute icon, someone on the other side of the world could create a wallpaper to match. This collaborative process is, I think, what sets it apart from other customization services. While you could make a design in practically any style you wish, it looks like many of the creations that users are submitting fall into the kawaii category. And as we have seen in the past, such Japan-made apps that offer cute services like this have great appeal…

CocoPPa pitches at Infinity Ventures Summit

This is part of our coverage of the startup LaunchPad event from the Infinitity Ventures Summit in Sapporo, Japan. To read about other startups who pitched, you can read our other reports here.

Accounting startup CFO won the Infinity Ventures Launchpad event with Freee, its financial service for small business. But it was followed in second place by CocoPPa, a very clever service that lets you customize you iPhone icons and homescreen. While there are many services out there that let you do such customizations to your mobile, where CocoPPa is unique is that it offers a platform where users around the world can share and collaborate on these kind of designs.

So for example, if a person in Japan creates a cute icon, someone on the other side of the world could create a wallpaper to match. This collaborative process is, I think, what sets it apart from other customization services.

While you could make a design in practically any style you wish, it looks like many of the creations that users are submitting fall into the kawaii category. And as we have seen in the past, such Japan-made apps that offer cute services like this have great appeal with overseas users.

The service was originally launched last July, and since then they have seen over 7.5 million downloads, with half of those coming from the US. They have 1.35 million monthly active users, and are seeing impressive growth. The word-of-mouth buzz around CocoPPa is good, with users sharing their screen designs on social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram (for example, see screens from Pinterest user lindsayw72 below).

Back in April they released a web version, and and Android version of the service will be coming soon too. As for monetization, currently the startup depends on ad revenue, but they will be looking to other options as well in the future.

For more information, you can check out CocoPPa’s promo video below.

CocoPPa

Japanese homescreen decoration app hits 12M downloads, partners with Sanrio

Japanese homescreen decoration app CocoPPa looks for new markets through Opera Mobile Store

Can CocoPPa succeed overseas with a Japanese monetization model?

Japanese homescreen decoration app CocoPPa reaches 10M downloads, most from overseas

CocoPPa partners with Tokyo Otaku Mode on anime-themed decorations for your smartphone homescreen