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tag Cute Japanese Apps

With 10M downloads, Japan’s Papelook app knows how to get the girls

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It has been a while since we looked in on the Japanese photo collage app Papelook. So recently when the company made an announcement that its app would be preinstalled on Aquos Pad tablets (at the suggestion of KDDI) we thought we’d get back in touch to see how they’re doing. Interestingly, we found that the Japanese telco au/KDDI has featured Papelook heavily as a selling point on the tablet’s product page and in their promotional video (about 18 seconds in). As we have pointed out before, the app’s popularity among Japanese girls and young women cannot be understated. And while girls here in Japan especially love this collage app, the Android version of Papelook is doing fairly well in a number of Asian regions too. In fact, the company claims that their app has been downloaded more than 10 million times in total as of this past January. That puts it in the same category as Cocoppa, which has leveraged Japan’s unique ‘kawaii’ style to become a sort of international hit among women. In Japan mobile companies really make an extra effort to go after specific demographics when selling mobile products (for example, girls, seniors, young kids), so it’s…

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It has been a while since we looked in on the Japanese photo collage app Papelook. So recently when the company made an announcement that its app would be preinstalled on Aquos Pad tablets (at the suggestion of KDDI) we thought we’d get back in touch to see how they’re doing.

Interestingly, we found that the Japanese telco au/KDDI has featured Papelook heavily as a selling point on the tablet’s product page and in their promotional video (about 18 seconds in). As we have pointed out before, the app’s popularity among Japanese girls and young women cannot be understated.

And while girls here in Japan especially love this collage app, the Android version of Papelook is doing fairly well in a number of Asian regions too. In fact, the company claims that their app has been downloaded more than 10 million times in total as of this past January. That puts it in the same category as Cocoppa, which has leveraged Japan’s unique ‘kawaii’ style to become a sort of international hit among women.

In Japan mobile companies really make an extra effort to go after specific demographics when selling mobile products (for example, girls, seniors, young kids), so it’s interesting to see that an app like Papelook can ride such specialization to achieve this pre-installed status. In fact, Japan has an abundance of cute mobile apps that could be used in this way.

A representative from Papelook tells me that they will try to go after the young mothers demographic this year, although I understand that they are working on some other photo apps as well.

If you’d like a video overview of how Papelook works, you can check that out here. The crop/clip tool has been greatly improved, and other adjustments have been made since that last video, so I encourage you to give it a try and experience the app for yourself.

papelook

WeChat turns to Japanese startup Quan for mobile sticker content

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Japanese startup Quan announced today that it has partnered with Chinese internet giant Tencent to provide stamp content within the latter’s WeChat mobile messaging app, starting today. The first set of stamps will be a Mr. Egg character set, downloadable for free from within the chat application (pictured below). Quan has built an interesting business model on top of cute, exportable Japanese content. It’s very much the same flavor of content that has led to the global success of other cute Japanese apps such as CocoPPa or Decopic. But in addition to its ‘kawaii’ appeal, Quan is riding the message app wave, with its app myStickerShop and other sticker-related business. Currently, when it comes to chat-related content, Quan has over 200 characters under its belt. Recently the company has been focused on obtaining licenses for even more, which should help solidify its reputation as the go-to company for this kind of mobile content. Readers may recall that we interviewed the company’s CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno earlier in the year about his company’s business in Thailand, including a tie-up with the nation’s largest mobile operator, AIS. They plan to establish a subsidiary in Thailand by the end of the year. As for…

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Japanese startup Quan announced today that it has partnered with Chinese internet giant Tencent to provide stamp content within the latter’s WeChat mobile messaging app, starting today. The first set of stamps will be a Mr. Egg character set, downloadable for free from within the chat application (pictured below).

Quan has built an interesting business model on top of cute, exportable Japanese content. It’s very much the same flavor of content that has led to the global success of other cute Japanese apps such as CocoPPa or Decopic. But in addition to its ‘kawaii’ appeal, Quan is riding the message app wave, with its app myStickerShop and other sticker-related business.

Currently, when it comes to chat-related content, Quan has over 200 characters under its belt. Recently the company has been focused on obtaining licenses for even more, which should help solidify its reputation as the go-to company for this kind of mobile content.

Readers may recall that we interviewed the company’s CEO Kazuhiro Mizuno earlier in the year about his company’s business in Thailand, including a tie-up with the nation’s largest mobile operator, AIS. They plan to establish a subsidiary in Thailand by the end of the year.

As for Tencent, this is not the first time that it has turned to Japanese expertise to improve its mobile offerings. The company previously enlisted Japan-based Nanameue Inc to develop its MotionPics Maker app for WeChat.

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Japan’s Petatto Memo pins cute reminders to your phone’s home screen

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A few weeks back we mentioned Japan’s Community Factory, a company acquired by Yahoo Japan a year ago, which produces a number of cute/kawaii apps for smartphones. The most notable of these apps is its Decopic app, but the company aspires to overrun your entire homescreen with uber-pink cuteness. Community Factory’s latest hit is Petatto Memo, a memo application that lets you pin cute little notes (in the form of web shortcut icons) to your homescreen as visible reminders of things you have to do. This is admittedly a somewhat crude approach to task management, with so many great to-do and reminder apps out there. But for people out there who want something that stays in their face, these homescreen reminders will certainly do the trick. Even after you type the text into your memo and pit it, you can edit it at a later date if you choose. There are over 300 varieties of cute memos to choose from, so there’s lots of room for creativity. Personally, I think the adding/editing process is maybe a little clumsy, but I guess that’s the sacrifice you make for getting a visible note pinned to your homescreen [1]. Currently Petatto Memo is…

petatto memo

A few weeks back we mentioned Japan’s Community Factory, a company acquired by Yahoo Japan a year ago, which produces a number of cute/kawaii apps for smartphones. The most notable of these apps is its Decopic app, but the company aspires to overrun your entire homescreen with uber-pink cuteness.

Community Factory’s latest hit is Petatto Memo, a memo application that lets you pin cute little notes (in the form of web shortcut icons) to your homescreen as visible reminders of things you have to do.

This is admittedly a somewhat crude approach to task management, with so many great to-do and reminder apps out there. But for people out there who want something that stays in their face, these homescreen reminders will certainly do the trick.

Even after you type the text into your memo and pit it, you can edit it at a later date if you choose. There are over 300 varieties of cute memos to choose from, so there’s lots of room for creativity. Personally, I think the adding/editing process is maybe a little clumsy, but I guess that’s the sacrifice you make for getting a visible note pinned to your homescreen [1].

Currently Petatto Memo is the third ranked free app in the Japanese app store, and is number one in the Lifestyle category. It’s sister app, Petatto Calendar, is number four in the Lifestyle Calender, and ladies who enjoy the memo app might want to try that as well.

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  1. I tend to scoff at these super cute apps sometimes. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that they are pretty big business here in Japan, and are turning out to be a very exportable part of Japan’s mobile content industry.  ↩

Japan’s CocoPPa has global appeal, hits 15M downloads, 83% from abroad

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Japanese homescreen decorating application CocoPPa has surpassed 15 million downloads as of September 30th. What’s most remarkable about this is that a whopping 83% of its downloads come from beyond its home market of Japan. CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market. Because of this, United (CocoPPa’s parent company) stands out as a prime example of a company that dares to look abroad. It’s also a great example of how Japan’s cute/kawaii culture can be a very exportable commodity, even on mobile. As you can see in the chart below, CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market, and 17% from its home market. England and Taiwan each represent 4%, while Canada, Brazil, and Germany represent 3% each. United recently launched version 2 of its app (for both iOS and Android), with a number of new features available. There’s now a ‘download all’ function that will let you download entire homescreens (background and buttons). And the ‘Lounge’ area lets you post your own homescreen set for other users to download. CocoPPa recently struck a deal with Chinese search giant Baidu in an effort to help market the app both in mainland…

cocoppa-15M

Japanese homescreen decorating application CocoPPa has surpassed 15 million downloads as of September 30th. What’s most remarkable about this is that a whopping 83% of its downloads come from beyond its home market of Japan.

CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market.

Because of this, United (CocoPPa’s parent company) stands out as a prime example of a company that dares to look abroad. It’s also a great example of how Japan’s cute/kawaii culture can be a very exportable commodity, even on mobile.

As you can see in the chart below, CocoPPa has seen 39% of its downloads occur in the US market, and 17% from its home market. England and Taiwan each represent 4%, while Canada, Brazil, and Germany represent 3% each.

United recently launched version 2 of its app (for both iOS and Android), with a number of new features available. There’s now a ‘download all’ function that will let you download entire homescreens (background and buttons). And the ‘Lounge’ area lets you post your own homescreen set for other users to download.

CocoPPa recently struck a deal with Chinese search giant Baidu in an effort to help market the app both in mainland China and here in Japan. The startup has also previously partnered with fellow Japanese startup Tokyo Otaku Mode to make available anime-themed homescreen sets on its platform.

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New Japanese iPhone app ranks the world’s cutest photos

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Kawaiit is a fun, social application from Japan that lets you submit, browse, and vote on kawaii (cute) pictures. It was launched just yesterday from the folks over at Jig.jp, so we thought we’d take a look. In the same spirit as Hot or Not, the application presents you with a stream of photos that you can approve with the ‘Kawaii’ button, or vote against with the somewhat strangely named ‘dis-kawaii’ [1]. There is a ‘top ranking’ area too where you can see the cutest photos from around the world. With a predominantly pink and pastel color scheme, the app is most definitely targeting a female demographic, with user-submitted photos organized into categories like Fashion, Nails, Hair & Beauty, Make[up] & Cosmetics and more. A Jig.jp representative told us why they think this app will appeal to users all over the world: We think most girls like cute stuff. Our app is for them. Without any language, they can communicate on the app through kawaii photos. She added that the app is based on the team’s experience developing communication apps and apps about Japanese culture. Their jigbrowser+ was previously released internationally, so they will build on that experience in order…

Kawaiit is a fun, social application from Japan that lets you submit, browse, and vote on kawaii (cute) pictures. It was launched just yesterday from the folks over at Jig.jp, so we thought we’d take a look.

kawaiit

In the same spirit as Hot or Not, the application presents you with a stream of photos that you can approve with the ‘Kawaii’ button, or vote against with the somewhat strangely named ‘dis-kawaii’ [1]. There is a ‘top ranking’ area too where you can see the cutest photos from around the world.

With a predominantly pink and pastel color scheme, the app is most definitely targeting a female demographic, with user-submitted photos organized into categories like Fashion, Nails, Hair & Beauty, Make[up] & Cosmetics and more. A Jig.jp representative told us why they think this app will appeal to users all over the world:

We think most girls like cute stuff. Our app is for them. Without any language, they can communicate on the app through kawaii photos.

She added that the app is based on the team’s experience developing communication apps and apps about Japanese culture. Their jigbrowser+ was previously released internationally, so they will build on that experience in order to help push this one abroad.

Despite my aversion for so much pinkness, I gave the app a quick test run, which you can see in the video above [2]. I uploaded a picture and within a few minutes there were already a bunch of people who had given it some Kawaii votes. There are handy photo decoration and filter options available as well if you’d like to enhance your picture’s cuteness.

If you’d like to give Kawaiit a try for yourself, you can download it for free over on the App Store.

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

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  1. I motion that this button be renamed as ‘Not so Kawaii’  ↩

  2. I should point out that the initial sign -in process was somewhat difficult due to an invisible username field on the sign-in page (to the right of the pencil icon). But I’m told by a rep that they’re looking at it, and it may be addressed in a future update.  ↩

A mobile game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting beans

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Here’s another unusual mobile game from Japan that sort of fits in the genre of ‘disgustingly cute’, like Battle Cats or Nameco. In fact Fermented Soybeans Factory, or Natto Koubou as it’s called in Japanese, looks like it’s trying to replicate many aspects the highly successful Nameco franchise from Bandai Namco, with the little brown beans sort of resembling Nameco mushrooms, and the pulling up motion much like Bandai’s. It’s hard to believe that anyone made a game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting fermented beans [1]. But that’s exactly what game developer Qooga has done. Players are challenged with pulling out the bad beans and pushing down the good ones, all within the given 30 second time limit. If you do it well enough, you’ll make it to the next level, and hopefully collect some rare natto characters on the way. If you’d like to see how it works, check my brief demo above. It’s really tricky to target the right beans when the spring up so fast. So while it’s certainly a casual title, it has a bit of a furious pace for the brief time that you play it. If you’d like to try it out for yourself,…

Here’s another unusual mobile game from Japan that sort of fits in the genre of ‘disgustingly cute’, like Battle Cats or Nameco. In fact Fermented Soybeans Factory, or Natto Koubou as it’s called in Japanese, looks like it’s trying to replicate many aspects the highly successful Nameco franchise from Bandai Namco, with the little brown beans sort of resembling Nameco mushrooms, and the pulling up motion much like Bandai’s.

It’s hard to believe that anyone made a game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting fermented beans [1]. But that’s exactly what game developer Qooga has done.

Players are challenged with pulling out the bad beans and pushing down the good ones, all within the given 30 second time limit. If you do it well enough, you’ll make it to the next level, and hopefully collect some rare natto characters on the way.

If you’d like to see how it works, check my brief demo above. It’s really tricky to target the right beans when the spring up so fast. So while it’s certainly a casual title, it has a bit of a furious pace for the brief time that you play it.

If you’d like to try it out for yourself, it’s available as a free download for iOS or Android.

Thanks to Axel Games for pointing out this one.

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  1. While these beans are famous for being bad, I actually kind of like them. Nice omelette filling.  ↩

Japan’s Snapeee to host fashion event in Taiwan

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See the original story in Japanese. Snapeee is a Japanese photo-sharing app serving more than five million users worldwide. Mind Palette, the startup behind the app, announced today it that it is planning to hold a promotional event featuring runway shows and music live performances for its fans in Taiwan. The event is called Snapeee Fes and it will take place on September 14th at ATT Show Box, Taipei, Taiwan. In addition to serving individual users, the service has set up corporate accounts for apparel brands and fashion magazines. According to the startup, one of the most popular users has so far earned 1.3 million followers on the platform. The event will be the first chance for the startup to promote their service, which has a very distinct Japanese ‘kawaii’ flavor. They will invite popular Japanese models like Tina Tamashiro and Yuka Mizuhara, as well as prominent Japanese fashion brands like Vivi, Peach John, and WeGo. 70% of Snapeee’s users comes from Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asian region, and they tend to be mostly female. In Taiwan in particular, the user base includes many fashion bloggers or models who are conscious about the Kawaii fashion trend. The startup…

snapeee-fes


See the original story in Japanese.

Snapeee is a Japanese photo-sharing app serving more than five million users worldwide. Mind Palette, the startup behind the app, announced today it that it is planning to hold a promotional event featuring runway shows and music live performances for its fans in Taiwan. The event is called Snapeee Fes and it will take place on September 14th at ATT Show Box, Taipei, Taiwan.

In addition to serving individual users, the service has set up corporate accounts for apparel brands and fashion magazines. According to the startup, one of the most popular users has so far earned 1.3 million followers on the platform.

The event will be the first chance for the startup to promote their service, which has a very distinct Japanese ‘kawaii’ flavor. They will invite popular Japanese models like Tina Tamashiro and Yuka Mizuhara, as well as prominent Japanese fashion brands like Vivi, Peach John, and WeGo.

70% of Snapeee’s users comes from Japan, Taiwan, and the rest of the Asian region, and they tend to be mostly female. In Taiwan in particular, the user base includes many fashion bloggers or models who are conscious about the Kawaii fashion trend. The startup expects to keep organizing such kind of events in order to establish a solid brand image in the region.

Line Pokopang is another inexplicably popular puzzler

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Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan. The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process. Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan. The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is…

Line Corporation’s chat platform continues to be an amazing distribution channel for its repertoire of games. The company’s hottest game these days is Line Pokopang, proving popular on both iOS and Android platforms where it is currently the top ranked free app in Japan.

The title is a casual puzzle game, with a very light RPG aspect that challenges you (a cute pink bunny) to defeat enemy monster invaders. It’s a simple match-three game with a one-minute time limit (indicator is on the bottom) to defeat the baddies, with special blocks that you can explode to speed up the process.

Initially released back on May 28th, Pokopang has been doing particularly well on the Android platform in Japan holding now lower than second position overall on Google Play store since June 15th, and ranking as one of the top grossing apps as well. For iOS, Pokopang has been a top ten mainstay since around mid-June, currently ranked as the top free app here in Japan.

The game has been advertised on television over the past week or so, and certainly that has likely contributed to its recent popularity. But I confess, I’m still a little surprised that the game is still doing as well as it is.

I’ve been playing the game a little bit, and while I’m not usually very interested in Line’s casual titles, this one is not so bad – but it most certainly will not be eating into any of my Puzzle & Dragons time. Pokopang is a little pushy in asking you to involve your friends on Line, and I expect that aspect has helped its popularity too.

It is pretty cute too, I suppose.

If you’d like a better idea of how Line Pokopang works, check out our demo video above. To try it for yourself, you can get it as a free download from the App Store or Google Play.

pokopang pokopang-3

Surviving the smartphone switch: Japan’s Pictlink has 7M users

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Japan is often considered ahead of its time in the mobile sector. There was particularly early development of advanced mobile features in its so-called ‘galapagos era’ when feature phones ruled the country. These phones had many services built in, with the most notable among them being i-mode’, provided by leading carrier NTT Docomo. But after Softbank first began selling the iPhone back in 2008, many feature phone services have been forced to switch to adapt. Back in July, we wrote about a Japanese company called Furyu which has been an important player in Japan’s ‘kawaii’ culture. Furyu is behind many interesting mobile services, as well as ‘purikura’ machines or photo booths. In 2003, the company released ‘Rakupuri Shot’ (roughly translated as ‘easy printing shots’), enabling users to save photos that have been taken in photo booths. At the time, this free service allowed users to download only one photo, and it still had over three million users. According to the company, 90% of girls in both middle school and high school have used the service at least once. Skip ahead to December of 2011 when Furyu released a smartphone app called Pictlink, a sort of an upgraded version of its…

Pictlink-web

Japan is often considered ahead of its time in the mobile sector. There was particularly early development of advanced mobile features in its so-called ‘galapagos era’ when feature phones ruled the country. These phones had many services built in, with the most notable among them being i-mode’, provided by leading carrier NTT Docomo. But after Softbank first began selling the iPhone back in 2008, many feature phone services have been forced to switch to adapt.

Back in July, we wrote about a Japanese company called Furyu which has been an important player in Japan’s ‘kawaii’ culture. Furyu is behind many interesting mobile services, as well as ‘purikura’ machines or photo booths. In 2003, the company released ‘Rakupuri Shot’ (roughly translated as ‘easy printing shots’), enabling users to save photos that have been taken in photo booths. At the time, this free service allowed users to download only one photo, and it still had over three million users. According to the company, 90% of girls in both middle school and high school have used the service at least once.

Skip ahead to December of 2011 when Furyu released a smartphone app called Pictlink, a sort of an upgraded version of its photo-saving service previously offered on feature phones. The app was sort of a social network where girls could download photos taken at photo booths, but they could also upload and share photos taken on their mobiles. The company recently announced that this service’s registered users have surpassed the seven million mark, which is a very impressive total.

In a recent update Pictlink added a new sorting feature, as well as resizable screen. Users can also learn about new photo booths available to try out. To save all photos on their phone, the app requires users to pay a monthly fee of 315 yen (or about $3.30). This may sound a bit costly, especially for younger kids. But typical photo booth users likely take many photos in the span of a month, and they are also comfortable with the concept of a monthly fee, having been introduced to paid downloads like ringtones and other digital contents since the times of feature phones.

Adapting from feature phones to smartphones is an obstacle that many mobile companies are facing these days, and so far it looks like Furyu is doing a good job. If you’d like to check out Pictlink, you can find it over on the App Store or on Google Play.

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

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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.