Japan's largest mobile marketing and advertising firm, D2 Communications (D2C), has acquired a 0.9% stake in Tokyo-based Ubiqituous Entertainment (UEI). D2C acquired a total of 400 UEI shares - other financial details of the deal, which was officially announced [JP] today, weren't disclosed.

In April last year, the two companies started a program called 9leap [JP] for young game smartphone game designers (our previous coverage).

With the capital partnership, D2C and UEI plan to continue the program, co-develop HTML5-based web services and mobile ad solutions, and use the latter company's knowhow in the gaming field to create new applications and content.

Founded in 2000, D2C is said to be not only Japan's largest but also oldest mobile advertising company. D2C's parent company is the country's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo - other shareholders are Dentsu, Dentsu Digital, and NTT Advertsing.

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

If you're an Android user, consider yourself a geek, understand Japanese, and need an appropriate home replacement screen on your handset, consider downloading Himasere. The app was released on the Android Market earlier this week by Tokyo-based tech company Ubiquitous Entertainment.

The idea here is to make it as easy as possible to access technology-related news and information (plus a game portal), just by flicking through the following sites from a single app:

• Weekly ASCII - PLUS (tech news)
• Yahoo Japan News - Topics
• Hatena Bookmarks (background on Hatena in English)
• Togetter (the English version of this Twitter curation service is called Chirpstory)
• TechCrunch Japan
• Engadget Japanese
• wise9 (blog specifically aimed at young game devs)
• Gizmodo Japan

If you had enough of reading news, you can flick through to 9leap (background in English), a game portal that lets you choose between 500+ games, which can all be played right from within the app:

Himasere supports Android 2.2 and up and is available for free on the Android Market.

Here is Ubiquitous Entertainment's official promo video for the app:

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

Telecommunications Carriers Association with all 5 Japanese cellphone carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI au, Softbank Mobile, Wilcom and e-Access(who runs e-Mobile) issued release on December 21 [J], ask their users not to call or e-mail around and after the midnight of 2012's new year's eve.

"Rabbit's last, and dragon's first request" line is from Chinese Zodiac, as 2011 was a year of rabbit and 2012 is dragon.

How active Japaneses' greeting after the New Year's eve may be already known by the incident they recorded the Twitter's world record last year.

Docomo's SP mail glitch in December was reportedly caused by too much traffic on regular media, though some online tech media point out that it is the fault of the system design (Docomo uses IP address to identify mail users). For carriers, asking their customers not using cellphone might be the cheapest preparation.

via Hatena Bookmark News [J]

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation on Japan's social gaming sector, in which I am analyzing some key areas and companies (especially DeNA and GREE) of this rapidly growing industry.

In particular, the presentation is focused on the local social gaming market, the differences to markets in the US and elsewhere, and future trends.

Here's an updated (and slightly edited) version of that presentation for your reading pleasure (direct link):

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

photo © 2006 Jyri Engestrom | more info (via: Wylio)

Strawberry Corporation, a Tokyo-based Japanese hardware maker announced [J, pdf] on October 27 that the company was delisted from Osaka Security Exchange JASDAQ market, as it was helped and subsidized by Advanex.

Their anchor product is micro-sized hinges used for clam-shell type cellphone and laptop PC.

Strawberry Corporation was rumored [J] to be bankrupted in June, listed on the stocks to be watched by Osaka Security Exchange.

This is obviously affected by decreasing clam-shell type cellphone from market. In 2008, the company boasted over 50% share for cellphone in Japan. Many vendors move to sell touch-panel smartphone, which do not use the hinge parts.

The company was listed on October 25 2001, so it had been listed for 10 years and 2 days. Their decade was with Japanese feature phone's success.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
No Comments »