M&A-related news are relatively rare in Japan’s startup scene, but today we can report that mobile social gaming juggernaut GREE has acquired Tokyo-based ad exchange service Atlantis for 2.2 billion yen ($26 million). The company will be turned into a GREE subsidiary.

Big G says that the acquisition marks their entry into the mobile/smartphone ad business, which has been growing rapidly in Japan in recent months. With the move, GREE also wants to strengthen its recently launched “GREE Platform for smartphone” by which games will be offered to users of Android handsets and iPhones.

In November last year, Atlantis registered 500 million impressions through smartphones across its ad network and says it sees this number increasing by 10-20% monthly. At 45 billion, the number of impressions served on all mobile phones in Japan (during August 2010) is significantly higher.

Atlantis was founded in 2007 and currently employs 15 people.

Via TechCrunch Japan

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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In Japan, New Year’s Eve and the New Year holidays are the biggest events of the year, and it is similar in virtual worlds.
CygerAgent‘s virtual world “Ameba Pigg [J]” sold a lot of virtual goods on the end of the year and the beginning of the year.

The Japanese eat “Toshikoshi-soba” on New Year’s Eve (soba are thin Japanese noodles made from buckwheat).

CyberAgent sold 150,000 virtual goods of this Toshikoshi-soba in Ameba Pigg. However, this doesn’t translate to profit for CyberAgent because these goods were paid for with free virtual currency.

On the other hand, the profit they received from Fukubukoro sales this year is awesome!

Fukubukuro are surprise bags sold by department stores and other places in Japan (the bags are sealed, and buyers don’t know what they will get). Sold at a steep discount, Japanese people love purchasing Fukubukoro on New Year.

CygerAgent started offering 2,011 limited edition virtual Fukubukuro in Ameba Pigg on New Year, filled with items for femal avatars only. However, all virtual Fukubukuro were sold out in a few hours on January 1.

The company charged 2,011 yen for each Fukubukoro, meaning it made:

2,011×2,011=4,044,121 yen (about 48,000 USD)

It looks like the profit you get from virtual Fukubukoro can be compared with real Fukubukuro.

In addition, 18 kinds of Oshogatsu (Japanese New Year)-themed virtual goods were very popular, too.

These Oshogatsu virtual goods were sold about 480,000 times between December 31, 2010 and January 3, 2011.
The most popular item of them was “Kadomatsu”.

“Kadomatsu” is a traditional Japanese decoration used during the New Year. It’s made from bamboo, pine, straw and plum (Japanese people used to decorate every house’s entrance with a Kadomatsu).

Each virtual Kadomatsu was priced at 200 yen, and CyberAgent sold about 16,000 of them!

200×16,000=3,200,000 yen (about 38,000 USD)

These Oshogatsu items are becoming outdated in the real world. However, they are still popular in the virtual world.

According to CyberAgent, about 2.4M users logged in to Ameba Pigg between December 31 and January 3. This number is almost equal to “Hatsumode”, the first Shinto shrine visit of the New Year in the real world.

Ameba Pigg has more than 5 million users currently, 65% of whom are women.

Tags: Japan by Chiho Komoriya
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Bijin Tokei, a company known for having developed a hot girl clock gadget, has recently developed the weather girl iPhone app called Bijin Tenki[J] in partnership with mobile app provider Dwango.

On the app, cute girls (no idea on how many girls are involved) will keep you updated with weather forecast for the next seven days, for your current location by utilizing the iPhone’s GPS function or pre-configured settings on the app.    You can check the profile of anyone you are interested in, such as name, date of birth and blood type.   You are also allowed to tweet a link to a weather girl you like.

Noteworthily, it has some patterns of error images in which the girls show us messages, which will be appeared on screen when a technical fault occurs.

See Also:

• Bijin Tokei: Japanese company offers Hot-girl-clock gadget
• Bijin-Tokei Gots Inevitable Follower – Adult Version
• Bijo Linux – Photo Site Where Girls Are Displaying Linux Commands
• Mi-in sigye: Korean company offers Korean Hot-girl clock gadget similar with Bijin-tokei
• Bijin Kabuka: Girls Presenting Quotes Make You Hot Even When Markets Are Cold

Tags: Company, Japan, New Service by Masaru IKEDA
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Tokyo-based mobile social gaming juggernaut GREE (22 million users, US$3 billion market cap) seems to intensify its international efforts. As announced by CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka back in June last year, big G has recently opened an office in the US after having made an investment in Singapore-based mobile social network mig33.

But Tanaka also said his company will hire additional staff to drive internationalization, and that’s what it is trying to do right now: last week, GREE set up a special job section on their official website. And by the looks of it, they are looking for quite a lot of internationally minded people, as the list includes engineers, smartphone developers, HR managers, PR people, designers, and many more.

Following a tweet by Tanaka (who intends “to build a global company from scratch”), GREE added open positions in business development in Europe, Asia Pacific, China, and other regions today.

The company says that it expects all applicants to have good English skills and that commanding other languages, especially Chinese and European languages, is a plus. According to the website, future employees must be willing to go on overseas business trips and to work in local subsidiaries outside Japan if needed.

What’s interesting is that the whole site for international jobs is in Japanese – there is no single piece of information on job opportunities at GREE available in English.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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