NHN Japan and its subsidiaries Naver Japan and Livedoor announced [J] today that it would merge three companies into one, new NHN Japan on January 1, 2012.

According to ComScore, the whole NHN Japan group is getting 43.08 million unique users’ visit monthly. The group has been enhancing its smartphone support, and the total number of applications download reached 17 million times.

Korea-originated NHN Japan bought Livedoor by $67 million in April 2010, is expected to generate multiplier effect. As we reported last month, the three companies planned to move their office to a newly constructed office building Shibuya Hikarie in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Social game network Hangame business will be managed by Game Division, led by the CEO Akira Morikawa. The head of Web Service Division, which will handle current Naver Japan and Livedoor portals, will be Takeshi Idezawa, the current Livedoor president. Livedoor’s data center business will be remained to Livedoor, which will be renamed with “Data Hotel K.K.”

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

Decopic, a “kawaii” photo editing and sharing app Tokyo-based startup Community Factory developed for iOS and Android, has hit the 500,000 user milestone – in just 2 weeks. According to the company, the app was released on October 19 and reached that user base on November 2.

Community Factory says they followed a multi-platform, multi-language strategy: Decopic is connected to Facebook, Twitter, Mixi, and Sina Weibo and Ren Ren in China. It’s currently available in English, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean.

Here’s the geographic user break down:

Decopic is very similar to Snapeee, another kawaii mobile photo service from Japanese company Mind Palette: users can “decorate” pictures with over 300 so-called stamps, frames, text, etc.

It’s available for free:
iOS
Android

Here’s a Decopic promo video:

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Serkan Toto
No Comments »

Japan Venture Research Report said [J] that the venture capital funds for start-ups are established 17 from January to September 2011, which is already more than 2010′s 15. The funds investing IT are 8 in 2011(by September), whilst 4 in 2010.

The report tells that in 2011, there have been more small sized funds observed, some of which investments are around 60 million yen (US$767,000), some invests by small unit such like 3 million yen (US$38,400).

via ITMedia

Tags: Investment, Japan by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »