Asiajin

It seems that GREE’s [JP] success story won’t come to an end too anytime soon. The performance of the 99% mobile social network/gaming platform is becoming scary, as in bubble-type scary. Stocks are rising and rising since the company went IPO in December last year and the financial situation keeps on improving, too.

And as a result, today marked the first time GREE’s market capitalization stood higher than that of competing mobile social network operator DeNA. DeNA is operating the social gaming platform Mobagetown whose business model (and almost everything else) was “inspiration” for GREE back in 2006, when the company completely overhauled the service and moved from the fixed web to mobile.

As far as the market cap is concerned, GREE is also beating Japan’s biggest social network Mixi [JP] whose number is nearly half as big currently.

At the Tokyo Mothers Stock Exchange for start-ups, the current situation (market cap-wise) looks like this:

• GREE: $1.66 billion
• DeNA: $1.65 billion
• Mixi: $0.91 billion

Granted, this is not too big of a difference, but still (data: July 1, 2009 at 3pm JST).

To bring things into perspective a bit:
Mobile- and Japan-only GREE’s market cap is now significantly higher than LinkedIn’s $1 billion valuation (LinkedIn has 42 million members - Gree has 12 million - and is said to be profitable, too).

Does something smell just wrong here?

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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SoftBank seems to be pretty bullish about the growing Chinese web market, which is no wonder as there are about 300 million web users in that country (China has the biggest Internet population in the world).

The Japanese technology behemoth formed two strategic alliances with high-profile Chinese partners in the last few days.

Alliance with Shanghai Media Group

Yesterday, Softbank announced a cooperation with media conglomerate Shanghai Media Group [CN] (SMG) under which they will provide the Chinese side with digital content (games, movies, anime, TV shows etc.), marketing support and copyright management consulting.

SMG, on the other hand, is supposed to teach SoftBank how web business is done in China. The Chinese company has over 5,000 employees and controls dozens of TV and radio stations, newspapers and various web services.

Alliance with Alibaba/Taobao

But that wasn’t all for SoftBank aspirations in China yesterday. The company also shook hands with the Alibaba group, the operator of the famous e-commerce platform of the same name. Alibaba is a B2B market place, but they also run Taobao, China’s biggest shopping portal (120 million registered users).

Here is Taobao’s top page:

Now SoftBank and Alibaba plan to to make it easier for Japanese businesses to sell their products on Taobao. After an order is placed, Alibaba takes care of exchanging yuan to yen and then transfer those yen to Japan once shipping is completed. SoftBank not only handles the payment in Japan but also offers support in Japanese to companies having to deal with product inquiries or customer complaints.

This potentially sounds like good news for SoftBank (and Alibaba). Incredible but true: Google Trends says China-only Taobao is even bigger than Amazon.com traffic-wise.

Tags: China, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Pixiv [JP], a Japanese-only “social illustration” network (Asiajin articles), today welcomed its one millionth member. The site boasts a healthy growth rate, as the user base stood at 100,000 in March 2008.

Pixiv claims the site sees 720 million page views monthly and that users submit 15,000 illustrations daily. It’s not hard to believe. Look at this pretty impressive Google Trends graph (especially after April 2009):

The idea behind Pixiv is to provide talented amateur artists with a platform to present their drawings to other people. Registered users can rate these drawings, write comments on them, bookmark them etc.  The usual social network features are in place, too: befriending, profiles, messaging etc.

Here is a typical image (click for a larger view):

Premium members pay $6 a month to get a badge on their profile and some other benefits (judging from what I heard, Pixiv also attracts quite a few gaijin who can’t talk Japanese but somehow fight their way through the registration process).

Look here for a list of other social drawing services from Japan.

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Google took multiple beatings from various Japanese sides (press, politics, activists etc.) ever since deciding to launch Street View in this country. Google Japan countered concerns if their service is consistent with existing Japanese law by taking some Japan-specific actions, such as using special cameras.

So far the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the most powerful interest group in the conflict, was quite silent about this question.

But today ministry representatives said Street View doesn’t break the national personal information protection law because of the following reasons:

• faces of individuals are usually blurred out
• being able to see license plates on vehicles doesn’t enable Street View users to identify the owners
• being able to see a house or apartment from the outside doesn’t mean Street View users can gain information about the people living there

The ministry also said this statement is just a first reaction, which will be followed by a more detailed report in August this year.

In Japan, Google Street View was launched in August 2008 and made available to ten prefectures in February 2009 (initial release: May 2007). (2007-05-25)initial

Tags: Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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GREE, a mobile social network only operating in Japan, is adding members at an incredible speed. In April 2008, the number of registered users hit 10 million members already, but GREE expects a whopping 2 million more as early as the end of this month.

GREE offers dozens of (essentially) free games to play on cell phones and is probably more of a social gaming site. And the company is printing money, it seems (via ads and, much more importantly, avatar-related and in-game item sales).

Here are some numbers GREE is expected to hit for the current fiscal year (that ends June 30 for the company):

- Sales: $138 million (4.6 times more than in fiscal 2008)
- Pretax profit: $76 million (7 times more)
- Net profit: $40 million (7 times more)

These numbers don’t come from nowhere and exceed the company’s own expectations. For the current fiscal year, GREE invested 3 times more in ads than last year. The $20 million promotion budget goes into web ads, offline ads (for example in commuter trains and public spaces) and TV spots.

Here is a GREE commercial featuring Japanese “idol” Yukina Kinoshita that’s currently on heavy rotation on Japanese TV:

The stock market rewards this performance with a market cap that currently stands at a whopping $1.4 billion. GREE, which went IPO in December last year, dwarfs former rival Mixi whose market cap currently reaches just $700 million. (With 17 million members, Mixi is Japan’s biggest social network, but it doesn’t have gaming content and is much stronger on the fixed web).

And GREE itself is highly optimistic for fiscal 2010, too. The company expects sales to jump to $200 million and wants to boost ad spend to $40 million in that year.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier NTT DoCoMo and major publisher Shueisha have teamed up and plan to launch an e-manga delivery service for cell phones in Europe. Dubbed Manga Mode and launched yesterday, the service already lets manga enthusiasts in France choose between about ten different titles.

Certainly the manga with the biggest potential is Dragon Ball, one of the most successful comic series ever made. Other hit manga in the line-up include Death Note and Naruto.

Offered through a subcription model, the titles (which will be translated versions of the Japanese originals) will be priced between $1.50 and $7 monthly. The manga viewing software was developed by Sharp and Tokyo-based Celsys, a pioneer in that field.

DoCoMo says France, where the number of manga lovers is particularly high, is just the beginning and that more countries are targeted for Manga Mode in the near future.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Event Report, Japan, New Service, News, Technology, Video by Serkan Toto
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While it’s not unheard of that entrepreneurs and VCs from Japan go to California for information exchange, fund-raising (sometimes), networking and other purposes, Americans taking the trip to Tokyo are still the exception. This is the main idea of an initiative called GeeksOnAPlane, initiated by Silicon Valley icon Dave McClure (his San Francisco-based venture capital firm Founders Fund) and China-based Web2Asia: Get people from the US over here to Japan to learn about the local tech and web industry scene.

Starting on June 7th and lasting through June 16th, a total of about 25 US-based entrepreneurs, VCs, IT journalists and tech bloggers will hit up Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai. The Tokyo leg of the tour starts tomorrow (Monday, June 8th), with everybody attending the 25th Tokyo 2.0 event in SuperDeluxe in Dowtown Tokyo.

You shouldn’t miss Tokyo 2.0, especially because the events following on Tuesday and Wednesday (the day the tour moves on to Beijing) are invitation-only.

Disclosure:
Asiajin is official media partner of GeeksonAPlane. I am a writer for tech blog TechCrunch, which is also a media partner. Co-organizer Andrew Shuttleworth is an advisor to Asiajin.

Tags: Announcement by Serkan Toto
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It seems Japan is getting more serious as far as cloud computing adoption is concerned.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, better known as NTT, is planning to invest about $470 million into cloud computing system-related R&D over the next three years. This decision may just right come right in time (or possible half a year too late) as Japan’s companies have to overcome drastic drops in earnings and might be all the more interested in cutting costs through boosting cloud computing usage.

Starting this year, NTT plans to invest about $157 million yearly till 2012, about 8 times more Japanese media speculate the company spent in 2008 for cloud computing research.

NTT says some Japanese companies still shy away from cloud computing, in fear of what to expect in the case of a disaster, security threat or quality issue. These fears are going to be addressed through making use of proprietary encryption technologies and improved anti-disaster measures.

Employing nearly 200,000 worldwide, NTT is one of Japan’s biggest corporations. The company is listed in the Tokyo, New York, and London stock exchanges, with the Japanese government owning about one third of all shares of the company.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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It took 28 months, but now it has happened. Japan’s answer of sorts to American video platform Hulu, a content-on-demand service called acTVila, has racked up one million subscribers [JP, PDF].

acTVila is surely benefiting from the sharp rise in popularity of Internet-enabled TV sets, which are required to used the video-on-demand service. Users can download movies or TV series and watch them directly on their TVs without going through a PC first.

But in contrast to Hulu, for example, the service also comprises news, games, weather information and a lot of additional content that acTVila users have access to. Even Japan’s No. 1 online shopping site Rakuten, has a slot on the top menu. The service is designed to be more like a web portal (instead of a mere video-on-demand service), only optimized for consumption on a TV.

What I found interesting in the press release linked to above is that acTVila says 90% of customers are male and that the average age of their customers is 40.1 years. The service is a joint venture between Sony, Matsushita, Sharp, Hitachi and Toshiba.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Community, Japan, News by Serkan Toto
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My personal favorite web concept of 2009, the Bijin Dokei (Hot Girl Clock) gadget, which I was happy to introduce in March, gets an iPhone app (App store link). Finally. The clever people from PHIRIA Design offer the gadget worldwide for $2.99/2.39 Euros (they even provide a German description in the German App Store).

Similar to the web gadget, you get 1,440 pictures of cute Japanese girls fading in and out each minute. Each of the girls holds up a sign that displays the time your iPhone shows. Pure genius.

Needless to say, it’s also possible to zoom in on the girls via double click or pinching and save the really good pictures in the photo album. The app also works with your iPhone alarm settings.

Look at the screenshots below for a teaser before downloading.

Via App Bank [JP]

Tags: New Service by Serkan Toto
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