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.

D2 Communications Acquires 0.9% Stake In Tokyo-Based Ubiqituous Entertainment

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:

Himasere: Geeky Home Screen Replacement App For Android

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]

Japanese Carriers Begs Not To Use Cellphone For 2 Hours Around New Year’s Eve Midnight

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):

Presentation: DeNA, Mobage, GREE – Demystifying Japan’s Social Gaming Market

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.

Smartphone Popularity Makes Hinge Vendor Delisted

Girl's Kaomoji Jiten 5000 (Facial-expression Words Dictionary 5000) by Pedigree(Android)/ADandD(iOS) is a free smartphone application from which you can copy over 5,000 Japanese-style text drawings Kaomoji to decorate your message.

Those 5,000 facial expressions are categorized into 10;

• Greetings
• Happiness
• Sadness
• Action
• Talk
• Anger/Argument
• Love/Friendship
• Life
• Special occasion/Weather
• Animals/Characters

Each category has many sub-categories. Here is the greetings sub-categories which have "Good morning", "Hello", "Good evening", etc.

Hitting one will show you several different expressions. Here are "Sadness"-"Weeping" ones,

You may copy and paste it, or on Android call it from Japanese(or other) Input Method.

Android version is downloaded over 500,000 times, and the average of over 1,500 application reviews is pretty high, 4.4.

There are iPhone version and Android version. There are also localized versions for Chinese, Korean and English. Some variants are not free.

Girl’s Kaomoji Jiten 5000 – Free Massive Japanese Emoticon Dictionary For Android/iOS

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:

Decopic: Kawaii Photo Sharing App Gets 500,000 Users In 2 Weeks

Mitsubishi Electric has developed a prototype app for iPhone and Android phones that could make life for the millions of commuters living in Tokyo a bit easier. The so-called "Yamanote Train Net" [JP] app is currently being tested in one train on the famous Yamanote line that circles the center of Tokyo.

Users can expect to get various information (and ads) delivered to their smartphone when they enter the train.

Mitsubishi explains what's needed for the app to work:

"This is a completely closed Wi-Fi environment in a train. Content from a server on the train is basically provided via Wi-Fi, so the service isn't directly connected to the outside world."

The app tells users how crowded the train in question is (in real-time), what the temperature is like, when and where it's best to change trains, which trains are delayed, etc.

There is also a "channel" for advertisements (videos), but it will be also possible to download coupons or "entertainment" content on your iPhone or Android phone.

Downloads (Japanese only, free):
iOS
Android

This video, shot by Diginfo TV, provides more insight (Japanese/English subbed):

Video: Mobile Train Information Service “Yamanote Train Net”

BCN Ranking announced the statistics of the first week sales of iPhone 4S in Japan. At this new version, the nation's 3rd carrier Softbank Mobile's exclusive distribution since iPhone 3G ends, the 2nd largest carrier KDDI au enters to sell iPhone.

The ranking shows the two carriers' iPhone 4S with three variations of memory-size, 64M/32M/16M, total 6 variations occupied the top 6.

BCN Ranking counted the carriers share only within iPhone 4S [J], Softbank took 51.7%, whilst KDDI au gained 48.3%.

BCN Ranking collected the number of sold units from shops, which it claims to cover 40% of Japanese retails. The retail shops do not include Apple Stores and carriers stores.

iPhone 4S Japan – Newcomer KDDI au Runs Even Fight Against Softbank

The iPhone 4S is coming to Japan: both SoftBank Mobile and new provider KDDI au, the No. 3 and 2 mobile carriers in this country, will start accepting pre-orders from Friday October 7, as shown on Apple Japan's website.

The iPhone 4S will then become available exactly one week later, on October 14 (as in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK).

According to Japanese business daily The Nikkei, KDDI will offer the phone in 1,200 locations all over the country, including electronics retailers. The company plans to boost this number to 5,000 as early as at the end of next month.

Just like SoftBank, KDDI will offer the iPhone 4S only in brick-and-mortar stores, not online.

KDDI (And SoftBank) To Accept iPhone 4S Pre-Orders From October 7