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Japan’s Slide Movies launches Android app, looking to reach more global users

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based mobile app developer Nagisa introduced an Android version of its movie app Slide Movies today.[1] The app allows you to create a movie by only choosing several still images. It can focus on a face in every frame using the face recognition technology on smartphones, in addition to providing a ‘realistic feel’ by inserting animated frames in the movie. Since its launch back in December, an iOS version of the app has surpassed 1.7 million downloads. According to Nagisa’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama, they have developed the Android version in response to a high demand from users. He told us that they have received over 10,000 pre-registrations for the Android version on their teaser site. Some of our readers may recall that the company was offering a promotion campaign in partnership with Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, which gave you reward coupons when you created a movie clip using their TV commercial song and uploaded it to the service. Since receiving proposals from many companies, they are planning to offer the next marketing promotion of this type in July. While most of their users are Japan-based for now, they will start global expansion to coincide…

slidemovies_featuredimage

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based mobile app developer Nagisa introduced an Android version of its movie app Slide Movies today.[1] The app allows you to create a movie by only choosing several still images. It can focus on a face in every frame using the face recognition technology on smartphones, in addition to providing a ‘realistic feel’ by inserting animated frames in the movie.

Since its launch back in December, an iOS version of the app has surpassed 1.7 million downloads. According to Nagisa’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama, they have developed the Android version in response to a high demand from users. He told us that they have received over 10,000 pre-registrations for the Android version on their teaser site.

Some of our readers may recall that the company was offering a promotion campaign in partnership with Japanese convenience store chain Lawson, which gave you reward coupons when you created a movie clip using their TV commercial song and uploaded it to the service. Since receiving proposals from many companies, they are planning to offer the next marketing promotion of this type in July.

While most of their users are Japan-based for now, they will start global expansion to coincide with the launch of the Android version. In addition to users from Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Taiwan, they’ve seen a gradual increase in downloads from Brazil, so they will also begin targeting the Latin American region from now on.

CEO Yokoyama explained how they will evolve the market from here:

We’re planning to add a new feature to the iOS version of the Slide Movies app soon, which allows you to splice a movie clip with other clips. We’ll introduce a series of movie creation apps intended for several different usages rather than putting many features in one app.

They are targeting 5 million downloads with the both iOS and Android versions by the end of 2014.

Our regular readers may recall that Tokyo-based mobile developer Donuts invested about $1 million in Nagisa last month.


  1. Not to confuse this with Slide Story.

Japanese mobile game giant Donuts invests in app developer Nagisa

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Donuts, a mobile game developer and the creator of the video app MixChannel, announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Nagisa. Details of this investment were not disclosed but it appears to be worth about $1 million according to Nagisa’s corporate profile and past funding history. Launched back in 2010, Nagisa operates a messaging app called Balloon, and previously raised 100 million (or about $1 million) from Nissay Capital. Subsequently, they also produced the photo effects app Kame Camera, the diary app Livre, and a virtual idol app The 49th Girl — all of which have surpassed five million downloads cumulatively. The company also tells us that their movie app Slide Movies has acquired over 700,000 downloads in the two months since its launch back in December, and its monthly downloads surpassed 1 million in April alone. The company’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama told us that they are planning to expand their business to other sectors including C2C (consumer-to-consumer), fashion e-commerce, and games, thus making the most of their rapidly growing user base. As an investor, Donuts is interested in that user base, and is exploring synergy around Donut’s hit movie…

donuts-on-glass

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Donuts, a mobile game developer and the creator of the video app MixChannel, announced today that it has invested an undisclosed sum in Nagisa. Details of this investment were not disclosed but it appears to be worth about $1 million according to Nagisa’s corporate profile and past funding history.

slidemovies_screenshot
Slide Movies

Launched back in 2010, Nagisa operates a messaging app called Balloon, and previously raised 100 million (or about $1 million) from Nissay Capital. Subsequently, they also produced the photo effects app Kame Camera, the diary app Livre, and a virtual idol app The 49th Girl — all of which have surpassed five million downloads cumulatively.

The company also tells us that their movie app Slide Movies has acquired over 700,000 downloads in the two months since its launch back in December, and its monthly downloads surpassed 1 million in April alone. The company’s CEO Yoshiyuki Yokoyama told us that they are planning to expand their business to other sectors including C2C (consumer-to-consumer), fashion e-commerce, and games, thus making the most of their rapidly growing user base.

As an investor, Donuts is interested in that user base, and is exploring synergy around Donut’s hit movie app MixChannel through this investment.