Japan in Numbers

Report: Japanese Gaming Market 2012

2012-12-12T09:58:00.001+09:00

A must-read report about past, present, and future of Japan gaming market released by GMO. This is a truly amazing job covering all aspects of gaming market dynamics in Japan, including consoles, PCs, Web and mobiles.

Japanese Gaming Market 2012 from GMOCloud

Cookpad: Nice example of offline-2-online co-marketing

2012-12-02T15:08:00.001+09:00

The bottle of mixed vegetable juice I bought for my morning breakfast delight had some unusual information printed on its label - the recipe of shrimp fritters provided by Cookpad, Japan's largest recipe website. Of course, the recipe advised to use the mixed veggie juice to cook the shrimp fritters. What a cool idea! Intrigued, I checked the label on the second bottle of the same juice I bought (yes, I buy in bulk ;) and it was a different recipe from Cookpad! Isn't it a perfect example of a win-win tie-up for for juice vendor and online service.

Stats: Japan is the fourth largest Internet market

2012-11-29T23:24:00.001+09:00

Japan currently retains the fourth place among countries with largest Internet populations, registering 101.7 million users. However, with the Internet penetration reaching 79.5% Japan is most likely to be overpassed by rapidly growing Brazil, which has 87.7 million users with just 45% penetration rate.

LOL! Retargeting really works ;)

2012-11-28T11:55:00.001+09:00

Today was one of those funny and embarrassing moments that you usually see in sitcoms like Office but not in real life. Well, in a meeting someone was showing us an article on a tech news site. The person used a work laptop and projector to display the article on the wall. Everything was fine until I noticed a right side banner with an L-size lingerie ad. An odd choice of ad for a tech news site you might think as the context of the article had no relation to the lingerie of any kind. Puzzled I glanced at the presenter and it hit me right there - that was a retargeted ad based on the browsing history of the laptop owner! Lesson learned is that you probably shouldn't browse work-unrelated sites as they will follow you on other sites by advertising the stuff you were checking out. Or at least make it a good habit of deleting your browser cookies ;)

Nintendo bets on old-fashion hardware play with Wii Mini

2012-11-28T09:16:00.001+09:00

With no Internet connectivity Wii Mini proves that Japanese device manufacturers still don't get the Internet. Just think about lost opportunities for Nintendo here. No WiFi connection means:

1) No online game subscription service revenues;
2) No online multiplayer gaming;
3) No access to the catalog of legacy games on Nintendo Console service;
4) No social layer like Facebook Liking and Tweeting; and
5) No data gathering on user playing, browsing and purchasing behavior.

Can Japan become the Next Silicon Valley?

2012-11-26T22:12:00.000+09:00

Benjamin Joffe, a self-established startup mentor and angel capitalist, gave a thoughtful presentation about what is missing in Japan startup scene to make it an entrepreneurial mecca of Asia. Benjamin did a very nice down-to-the-point comparison of Silicon Valley and Japan by evaluating six building components of true "Silicon Valley", which are 1) Market; 2) Capital; 3) People; 4) Entrepreneurial Culture; 5) Infrastructure; and 6) Regulations.

Not surprisingly, Japan scored very poorly, according to Benjamin's subjective, as emphasized by himself, evaluation. Nevertheless, I share his view of Japan's overall startup scene and believe he did a great job by highlighting the things that need to be improved. In Benjamin's opinion, the most lacking component in Japan is the Entrepreneurial Culture (few role models, fear of risk taking, no learning from failure, etc...) or to put it right, the absence of entrepreneurial culture. You can check his deck either here or on Slideshare. In the end, just a few word about the venue where he talked at. It is quite remarkable that the talk was hosted by the Open Network Lab, one of the standout examples of how startup things should be run in Japan.

What Nintendo and Sony? Gree and DeNA are new sheriffs in gaming town!

2012-11-24T08:33:00.001+09:00

This month Gree reported its operating profits to reach ¥15.75 billion. At the same time DeNA made an operating profit of ¥20.4 billion in 3Q2012. For comparison, that is more in just one quarter than Nintendo hopes to make for this whole year - even with the launch of its new Wii U console this month, according to The Economist. The key of their success is the popularity of mobile social gaming in Japan that is better tailored to the mobile lifestyle of Japanese casual gamers who have shorter attention span as they play during a train commute or lunch breaks. Having won in Japan, both Gree and DeNA are expanding globally.

Nokia Here Maps not so much for Japan

2012-11-21T09:14:00.001+09:00

According to Nokia Here Maps, this is my current location. it looks like to be in a middle of nowhere. But it is NOT! I took this screenshot at Ebisu station - one of Tokyo's vibrant & fun place, full with all kinds of restaurants and shops. So, I guess Japanese users will have to wait for a while. And if you are traveling to Japan, don't rely on Nokia Here as of yet.

The end of TechCrunch as I know

2012-07-28T12:42:00.001+09:00

Japan Inc set M&A record in 2011

2012-01-28T11:13:00.000+09:00

The extraordinarly strong yen - it has appreciated by 45% against the dollar in past four years - sent Japanese companies on a shopping spree abroad. With a cash pile of JPY60 trillion big listed companies are sitting on, it's no wonder corporate Japan spent a record $80 billion on some 620 foreign companies in 2011, exceeding the previous record of 466 acquisitions worth of $75 billion in 2008, according to Dealogic. The Economist's article sees this as not a sign of strength but weakness. The situation it argues is different from the Japan's corporate shopping spree in 1980s when the businesses in Japan were growing. Nowadays, a combination of Japan economy being sluggish, including March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, floods in Thailand, corporate-governance scandals, ageing population, lacklustre consumption and thanks to crises elsewhere makes Japan Inc seek opportunities abroad, especially in fast-growing emerging markets. Source: The Economist | Japanese firms shop abroad: Armed with a strong yen http://econ.st/sy4CjY

Social gaming market in Japan saw 80% growth to $3.2bn in 2011

2012-01-24T17:47:00.000+09:00

Yano Research estimates the size of Japanese social gaming market hitting 257 billion Japanese yen or about $3.2 billion in 2011, an increase of more than 80% from last year. In 2012 the market is expected to grow by 33% to 342 billion Japanese yen.

Source: Yano

Number of foreign nationals visiting Japan in 2011 dropped by 28% reaching 6.2 million

2012-01-24T15:03:00.000+09:00

Statistics by top countries can be seen in table below:

Source: BizMakoto

The Top 20 Debtor Countries: and the first place goes to Japan

2012-01-20T15:20:00.000+09:00

via

In Japan Facebook goes from niche to mass market adoption in one year

2011-09-30T11:30:00.000+09:00

Facebook seems to break away from a niche social network for foreigners and English-speaking Japanese users to a mass market contender. Recent numbers from Net Ratings, a Nielsen Web metrics company, show that more than 10 million users accessed Facebook from PC in August this year, marking a 5.6 times increase from the last year. The Facebook reach among PC users in Japan now accounts for 17%. In comparison, Facebook is still behind Twitter (23.6%) and Mixi (23.5%) in terms of PC reach. To be honest, the PC reach metrics may not be very indicative in the country like Japan, where the majority of users access Twitter and Mixi like services from mobile phones. For the full picture, we need to know the number of Facebook mobile users. So far, Net Ratings shared just one bit of info - 20% of Facebook users in Japan access the service from smartphones only. So, my estimate is that there are about 13 million users accessing Facebook at least once a month in Japan.

IDC Japan: mobile phone shipments 15% down in 2Q, smartphones now account for 45.5% of all units

2011-09-28T12:03:00.000+09:00

IDC Japan released Japan mobile phone market stats for 2Q11:

8.22 million units were shipped.
Mobile phone shipments were down 15% YoY, the first negative growth period in a seven quarter history.
Smartphones accounted for 45.5% of all shipments
Android smartphone shipments grew by six times to 2.74 million units, followed by iPhone, which shipments also increased twice the size, hitting 990K units.
Sharp held top share with 24.7%, followed by Fujitsu-Toshiba (19.1%), Apple (12.1%), Kyocera (10%), and Sony Ericsson (9.5%).

'Zynga of Japan' KLab goes public on Tokyo Exchange

2011-09-28T10:13:00.000+09:00

Japan-based Klab, initially a provider of large-scale system integration services and recently a social game and mobile content developer, went public yesterday on Tokyo Exchange Mothers section, a market for high-growth and emerging stocks. The IPO debut was successful, with share price jumping from initial 1,700 yen up to 4,070 yen at one point of the trading. However, today KLab's stock is experiencing a sell-out, loosing, as I write, 450 yen or more than 11%. Currently it trades at 3,460 yen. It will be interesting to see KLab's progress after the initial volatile period of stock price adjustment.

I should give a credit to @Jason for the initial 'Zynga of Japan' gem.

Amazon Japan to open a customer support center in Sendai, creates 1,000 jobs

2011-09-28T08:59:00.000+09:00

CNet reports that Amazon Japan will open a customer call center in Sendai, Japan. Amazon Japan's plan to open a customer support center in Sendai employing up to 1,000 locals will surely help the disaster stricken region of the North East region of Japan. The opening will happen in March 2012, marking exactly one year after the biggest earthquake and tsunami hit the North East of Japan.

DoCoMo makes 28.4m euro cash infusion in net mobile, gets serious about mobile payment play in Europe

2011-09-26T11:02:00.001+09:00

Based in Germany, Net mobile AG, a DoCoMo's wholly-owned mobile services developer, received 28.4 million Euro from mother company to do some strategic shopping around. To be exact, the money will be used to "acquire a controlling stake in Bankverein Werther, a private German bank with strong electronic commerce and payment services." Apparently, Bankverein's banking and credit card business licenses are the aim of DoCoMo, who wants to get a stronghold in Germany for its mobile payment service offering. DoCoMo did the similar move in Japan when they entered the mobile payment market several years ago.

Softbank to say good-bye to exclusive iPhone distribution rights in Japan

2011-09-22T10:20:00.000+09:00

Last night Nikkei had some big news to share: KDDI au will start selling iPhone 5 starting this November ending Softbank's iPhone distribution hegemony in Japan. Apple is once again about to reshape the Japan mobile phone market. The following two things are going to happen.

Softbank to feel the pressure
It's hard to underestimate the importance of iPhone exclusive rights for Softbank. According to Gartner estimates, the company sold 7.5 million iPhones in three years. Nikkei says that half of Softbank's monthly 200K-300K new adds goes to iPhone contracts. Moreover, the replacement phone upgrades' substantial share is also attributed to iPhone. By estimates, new and replacement sales combined, Softbank sells about 300K iPhones for Apple every month. Mainly thanks to iPhone, Softbank was able to significantly narrow the gap from KDDI au, being just 3 million shy (Softbank's 30.7m vs. KDDI au's 33.5m user base). It was a matter of time for Softbank to overpass KDDI an and become the second largest operator in Japan. Now it's going to change. First of all, KDDI au got a super retention tool to keep subscribers from fleeing the carrier. Second, along with improving the churn rate, KDDI au is getting ready to welcome new subs and iPhone refugees from Softbank, who are going to abandon the company dissatisfied with its well-known weakness point - lagging behind other carriers in 3G network coverage. Besides Softbank, NTT DoCoMo is also going to be under pressure to keep some of its users from fleeing to KDDI au.

Other handset vendors to feel the pressure
Handset makers, especially the domestic ones, are going to lose again. Apple is going to eat into their shares, squeezing the smaller guys out. It happened with Softbank and now it's going to happen with KDDI au as well. They say that when Apple signs a distribution agreement with a carrier, the company wants iPhone to account for about 20% of operator's inside hardware sales. Nikkei calculates that KDDI au will have to sell two or three million iPhones annually to meet this metric. These two-three million iPhone units are lost business for other handset manufacturers. Moreover, to sell more iPhones carriers put other handset vendors in disadvantage by subsidizing iPhone hardware and sticking to it a cheaper unlimited data monthly plan. That was the case with Softbank whose iPhone monthly plan was roughly one thousand yen cheaper than for other devices. It's expected that KDDI au will employ the similar strategy. All these factors will make other vendor suffer big time.

Are there any winners?
Apple is, of course the big winner here, along with KDDI au who is hopeful to fend off Softbank's onslaught. But also, consumers are going to benefit from more choices and better service quality option in case of KDDI au.

Japan social network mixi buys out Naked Technologies

2011-09-21T16:18:00.000+09:00

Mixi has just acquired through stock buyout Tokyo-based Naked Technologies, a developer of cloud-based mobile application management framework Colors.

Japan ANA orders 6,000 iPads from Softbank

2011-09-21T10:52:00.001+09:00

Marking Softbank's big enterprise win, ANA plans to equip its flight attendants with iPads. The era of digitization comes to the airline industry and ANA is one of the first air companies to switch from paper manuals to digital format. Aiming to increase service quality, ANA will provide its all flight attendant staff with Apple iPads by April 2012. Softbank will also provide cloud and security support for ANA.

I've just changed my blog's title

2011-09-20T11:22:00.000+09:00

I honestly think that the Japan's Cellphone Edge blog title has outdated some time ago and it's time to come up with a new name. First of all, cellphone sounds ancient, given the growth of smartphone market. Second, my interests go beyond the niche focus on mobile handset business and now include Web, content business, mobile applications, social media, startups, and entrepreneurial topics. Thus, the new name is going to be Japan in Numbers.

Primary, this blog will serve as a place to bookmark and take notes of all kinds of metrics related to Japan topics I am interested in. If you need some fresh numbers about Japan, stay tuned!

Anime is a 229 billion yen market in Japan

2011-09-20T10:41:00.001+09:00

Animated cartoon market in Japan enjoys growth second year in a row, according to research by MDRI. In 2010, it went up by 5.8%, hitting 229 billion Japanese yen. To be clear, this big number includes not only sales of Japanese "otaku" anime but also the box office receipts for Western animated films like Toy Story 3 and such.

Comparison of Japan's GREE and DeNA strategies in entering China market

2011-07-26T13:58:00.000+09:00

With a lot of news coming almost every week from Japan's GREE and DeNA social networks, I felt an urge to summarize some bits of information in regard to their expansion to China in order to make a clear picture of what's going on. The result is in a few slides embedded below. Please feel free to let me know of some possible misses or inaccurate facts, if any. Enjoy!

China Social Gaming Market Entry: Japan's GREE and DeNA Comparison

View more presentations from Alexei Poliakov.

Cookpad quarterly results: 10 million user base brings more profits

2011-06-15T10:17:00.000+09:00

Cookpad, Japan's leading online recipe website had just a great quarter, registering healthy increases in revenue, profits and user additions. I wrote recently about Rakuten playing a catch-up game with Cookpad but with such strong results Cookpad has a lot of confidence to fend off competition:

47.8% - revenue increase YoY (JPY3.2bn = over $40m)
52.8% - net operating profit increase YoY (JPY1.6bn = over $20m)
10.2 million - Cookpad current user base (14.6% increase from last year)
970K - number of recipes available
2 million - iPhone apps downloaded to date