BitWallet, who runs one of Japan's most successful e-money service Edy since 2011, who joined the Japan's largest e-mall group Rakuten in January 2010, 2 years ago, announced [J] that the e-money brand Edy will be changed to "Rakuten Edy" from June 1, 2012.
Rakuten did similar renaming on companies they bought, like DLJdirect SFG Securities to Rakuten Securities, Aozora Card to Rakuten Card, E-bank Bank to Rakuten Bank, etc.
JKT48, the Indonesian sister band of ultra-popular Japanese girl group AKB48 (Asiajin), is promoting Rakuten Belanja Online, Rakuten's joint venture with Jakarta-based media powerhouse PT Global Mediacom, on Indonesian TV.
In the 30-second commercial, various members of the group can be seen wearing different clothes and accessories and using gadgets - and apparently all items can be bought on the site.
Rakuten Belanja Online was first announced back in December 2010 and began operations in June 2011.
Here's the JKT48 TV spot:
2011 is over - reason enough to take a look at some of the key trends that shaped Japan's web, mobile, and gaming industries last year.
I could think, in no particular order, of five major developments that made a significant impact last year:
March 11 Triple Disaster
The triple disaster that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, highlighted the power and importance of social media and the web at large when it comes to communicating and sharing information with others - especially as the phone networks went bust immediately after the earthquake and made voice communication impossible.
Challenges remain, such as the digital divide (young vs. old people, users who are web-savvy vs. those who aren't, etc.) or the danger of mass-distributing false information through social media, but the web's "reputation" has clearly risen in Japan.
Internationalization
The list of Japanese web, mobile, and gaming companies that started expanding across borders (or bolstered their efforts) in 2011 is long: Rakuten, DeNA, GREE, Dwango's Nico Nico Douga, and CyberAgent are just the most prominent examples.
Quite a few startups are now creating services that are multi-lingual from the get-go (i.e. Sumally, Beatrobo, Crowsnest, etc., etc.).
The tech industry is maturing, Japan's population is greying, and entrepreneurs need to deal with saturated markets: expect internationalization to only pick up speed in the next years.
Android Revolution
The smartphone revolution started earlier than 2011 (mainly driven by the smash success of the iPhone), but it was during the last year that Android really started gaining a foothold in Japan. Just one example: SoftBank's winter 2011 cell phone line-up includes just one feature phone - but nine Android handsets.
Feature phones are still king in Japan, but market research companies like Tokyo-based MM Research are expecting smartphone shipments to outnumber those of traditional handsets next year.
Americanization
2011 is the year that Facebook started to become popular in Japan even though it will take at least another year to determine how sustainable the growth really is - not too few people think it has the potential to eventually throw market leader Mixi off the throne. Twitter has seen another massive boost in popularity after March 11 (see above).
In mobile, Google's Android and Apple's iOS are set to dominate the market in the next years - local mobile platforms have no chance in the foreseeable future.
Other trends
There have been consumers complaining that their Rakuten Super Point, virtual currency circulated in Japan's largest online shopping mall Rakuten Ichiba and its affiliated services, had been disappeared, the record said that they had spend it on online game service Nexon.
There are already over 100 Rakuten users reported to Rakuten that their points were spent for Nexon's games, which they did not play. (e.g. a question on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, Japanese Yahoo! Answers, on December 25, gets lots of "me, too!" answers. [J]) Some said that they have ever registered Nexon before, but did not use it recently.
On December 28, some national media (1, 2)started reporting and they say that Rakuten confirmed that they had received over 100 inquiries on similar cases with Nexon service.
Nexon, an company who provides many online games, a subsidiary of South Korean Nexon Corporation, has longer history in online PC games than feature-phone based newcomer Gree and DeNA(Mobage), just IPOed on December 14 at Tokyo Stock Exchange The First Section.
Nikkei reports [J] that Rakuten has decided to close its Zenryaku Profile, a social networking site having 6.4 million users and runs for about decade, even before the word "social networking service" established.
The site was originally run by other company, moved under Rakuten when it purchased a company who owned the service. Different from other Rakuten service which target adult consumers, Zenryaku Profile is a service mostly used by teenagers, to show who you are to their firstly-met friends. When you register, you will be asked about 60 questions to make your profile page, which was favored by non-net-savvy teenagers who did not like free text writings.
Nikkei wrote that the move was caused around Rakuten opposing DeNA's pro-baseball team Yokohaba Bay Stars purchase deal on 12 owners meeting planned on December 1 (see my The Japan Times column today), as Rakuten objects DeNA as an inappropriate owner because it runs deai-kei(dating) and social game services. So Rakuten tries to clean itself up by shutting down its own social network service.
As we reported on the day before yesterday, Rakuten silently testing Rakuten Profile not for teenagers but for their shop-owners and customers.
Many Hatsune Miku Videos Being Removed From YouTube By Invalid Copyright Report
A lot of these videos are back up last time I checked.
"www" has another meaning in Japanese Web
This explains so much. Now I can actually understand what people are saying over the internet!
Voltage's Romance Game For Girls “Pirates In Love” Advance Overseas
how can i buy it ?? im only 15 =.=
English Guide For Nico Nico Douga, Part 2: How To Use
I'm so glad I stumbled on this! I made a Nico Nico account a few weeks back,but haven't been able...
5,000 Yen($60) To Enable Twitter On Your Smartphone
There are many people who do not know what "download" means. Japanese feature phone web is being ...
