It has been a pretty busy week in the China technology space, with lots of activity from the big players, both foreign and domestic, especially in the mobile space. We also saw the net nanny make a brief and very annoying appearance, but thankfully not for too long. So in case you missed any of the action from the past week, here’s our recap to keep you up to speed:

Apple Terminates One China Supplier That Had 74 Underage Workers 01/25

We take a look at Apple’s most recent ‘supplier responsibility’ report, and find that there are still an abundance of problems, including one particular supplier in Guangdong which had been found to have scores of underage laborers.

Microsoft Under Fire For Skype China Business and Alleged Chat Intercepts 01/25

Microsoft is being challenged by dozens of rights advocates today in the form of an open letter to Skype. That letter is asking Microsoft to disclose any “surveillance and censorship capabilities” in the Chinese version of Skype.

WTF? Lenovo Considering Acquiring RIM to Boost its Mobile Arm 01/25

Lenovo has been enjoying pretty good business over the past year. But we’re a little confused by a Bloomberg report saying that the Chinese tech giant Lenovo is pondering an acquisition of Research in Motion. I suspect they must not be wearing their ThinkCaps™.

Nokia Sales Down 79% in China as Symbian Dies, Lumia Slow to Grow 01/24

Nokia is doing well in some countries with its slick new Lumia smartphones. But regrettably, China is not one of those countries as the company just posted its worst ever annual report for the country.

Check Out 3 Years of Stunning 3G Growth in China [CHART] 01/24

Want a big-picture overview of the kind of growth that China’s 3G industry has seen over the past few years? My colleague Steven has you covered, pointing out that quarterly 3G subscriber totals for China’s major telecoms going all the way back to 2009.

China Train Ticket Site Cost Nearly $100 Million, Seems to Be Harassing Programmers, And Might Be Broken Again 01/24

And you thought being a programmer in the US was difficult… Just be thankful that you don’t have goons showing up on your doorstep demanding that you delete that plugin you coded, or else!

Social Coding Site Github Unblocked and Accessible Again in China 01/23

As if coders didn’t have it bad enough, this week saw social coding site Github temporarily blocked in China. Thankfully it didn’t stay blocked for long. Clearly the long, strong arms of the Octocat can be very persuasive.

Apple Sees iPhone Sales Double in China 01/23

China is still as hungry as ever for iPhone, and it looks like the folks at Apple are going to oblige them with more retail stores in the country. Way cool.

Tencent Weibo, the ‘Other Weibo’ That Nobody Cares About, Reaches 540 Million Users 01/22

Tencent always seems to do very big things very quietly. While Sina Weibo is the big attention-getter in China’s microblog space, Tencent appears to have 540 million friends who are willing to console them.

Huawei Profits Up 33% in 2012, Now Seeing 66% of Revenue from Outside China 01/21

Huawei has seen a public relations nightmare in 2012, as we’ve written about many times on this blog. But the company still appears to be killing it in terms of profits, even in overseas markets.

ZTE Posts $400 Million Loss in 2012 01/21

In start contrast, that other scary Chinese telcom equipment manufacturer hasn’t been doing nearly as well.

That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you can click here or subscribe to our China RSS feed.

How was your week? Fun week? Big week? As usual our week was pretty busy trying to stay on top of all the latest tech happenings around the Asia region. And for your reading pleasure, we’ve put together of some our favorite picks from the past seven days. Read on for more.

Steven’s pick: Apple Sees iPhone Sales Double in China

With so many analysts recently putting the bull in bullish, there was quite a reality check from Apple’s newest financials. The numbers revealed that the iPhone is still seeing good growth in the country, with double the number sold in 2012 compared to 2011.

Andrew’s pick: China’s Xiaomi Aims its MiTalk Messaging App at Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea

The chat app war is getting interesting, and I can’t help but wonder how Xiaomi’s MiTalk will fare in this competitive market. It will be tough for the Chinese handset maker since all the other apps have a significant head start. But still, I think Xiaomi can give them a run for their money. Let’s see.

Willis’ pick: Revenue First

Revenue first. Though the concept isn’t quite true for every startup, I think it’s a refreshing angle to communicate the brutal truth about how hard it is to build a startup in Asia. The article helps to pull back entrepreneurs to reality, so they don’t get mesmerized by Silicon Valley magic. Asia ain’t like the Valley and it’s beautiful in its own ways. Needless to say, there’s lots of growth in Asia too.

Minh’s pick: Apple Indonesia Investment Confirmed, Jakarta Store and Online Sales Coming Soon

An Apple Store in Indonesia? How awesome is that? After all, it’s the largest Muslim country in the world and the most populated country in Southeast Asia. This only reinforces my thinking that Indonesia is on fire right now. With Tim Cook wanting to step up Apple’s market in China, it makes sense that Indonesia is also on his list.

Emily’s pick: Growing Faster than Facebook and Twitter: Key Highlights for Japan’s Line App [Infographic]

Japan’s popular Line app has taken Asia by storm. This week NHN Japan released an infographic (complete with their iconic characters) that confirmed their success in countries like Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan. It is also interesting to know that its amazing growth rate is about three times faster than that of Facebook and Twitter!

Rick’s pick: China Train Ticket Site Cost Nearly $100 Million, Seems to Be Harassing Programmers, And Might Be Broken Again

I’m not really that interested in the continued failings of the Railway Ministry’s miserable website — we’re sort of getting used to that. But I did find it really crazy that one plugin developer in Beijing was visited by ‘strange men’ and asked to take it offline. That’s harsh.

Charlie’s pick: Xiaomi Box Gets Regulatory Approval, Can Go on Sale

I’ve said before that I’m a big fan of Xiaomi’s courageous set-top box idea. I’m not sure this newly-partnered (and, probably, neutered) version of the device is going to set the world on fire, but it’s something that’s definitely worth keeping an eye on!

We’ve featured lots of fun photo apps from Japan in the past, and here’s another one that looks like a promising addition for Valentine’s Day. Called ‘Camely,’ the service is in fact a photo-centric SNS, almost like Instagram if it were force-fed estrogen supplements ¹.

Since it is a sort of social network, the sign up process (in Japanese) for Camely is a little bit tedious. But once that’s done, using the app is pretty straight-forward. You can take photos and apply a number of cute effects to them, including an assortment of filters, frames, stamps, and text effects.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, Camely has added a range of new stamps for the occasion, so now there are lots of cupids, hearts, and other photo decorations to that effect. Users can post images to their Camely page, or they can also share photo creations to Facebook, Twitter, or Mixi. You can also browse new and popular images from the apps main page, and follow your favorite users too.

Camely was released back in October, but received an update a couple of days ago, which included the new features. If you’d like to check it out, you can get it over on Google Play for free. (Furyu via PR Times)

• Line has 41.5 million registered users in Japan – This is the one which stands out the most to me, because given that recent estimates put Japanese entire population of smartphone users at around 40 million as well ¹, it means that Line is pretty close to being a ubiquitous mobile application in the country.
• 12.3 million users in Thailand, and 11.8 million users in Taiwan — both surprisingly high numbers!
• Reached 100 million users in just 19 months – This is faster than Twitter (49 months) and Facebook (54 months).

And while those numbers are impressive enough on their own, the application’s potential as a gaming platform is equally stunning. Yesterday we pointed out that its recent games Line Pop and Line Bubble have reached 20 million and 10 million users respectively, thanks to NHN Japan being able to distribute them so easily via its chat app platform.

20M downloads for Line Pop

More milestones for NHN Japan and its Line chat app, which is continuing to prove its worth as a game platform. After the company passed the lofty 100 million user figure last week, there’s word today that its popular game Line Pop has been downloaded by 20 million users, and Line Bubble by 10 million users.

Line Pop took 56 days to reach the milestone, having racked up 10 million downloads in its first 12 days. Line Bubble has been impressive too, with its 10 million downloads coming within its first 28 days. Both games are about as casual as they come, and personally I’m not a big fan. I’ve played them both, and uninstalled them after just a few days – and I wonder how many of the aforementioned downloaders have done the same. Nevertheless, I still get messages from friends whose score I’ve beaten ¹, asking me back to the game via Line chat messages.

And while I’m not really into these games, my wife is a huge Line Birzzle fan (another similarly casual puzzle game from NHN Japan) and I’m not sure if a day has passed in the last three months where she hasn’t played it.

The genius of Line is that it has a persistent connection with users, and can push new games and apps like these in front of them regularly as long as they continue to use the chat app (see picture, lower left). As I log in today, I see there’s a new Line Band app, which is a sort of group relationship manager. I’m not going to download it, but I think it’s impressive that Line can keep me aware of new products in this manner.

If you’d like to try Line’s full suite of casual games for yourself, you can get the Line app and browse them from the more/game section. [Via japan.internet.com]

Today GREE (TYO:3632) announced that it is officially releasing its NFL-branded card battle game for iPhone, called NFL Shuffle. Of course, regular readers of this blog may recall that the game was actually soft launched back around Christmas time, at which point I gave it a test run and gave my impressions. I’m a big NFL fan, so I enjoyed it — but there were more than a few bugs, as I noted at the time.

But it was, after all an early release, so it’s to be expected that there might be some wrinkles to iron out. So now that GREE is ‘officially’ releasing this one, one would think that all the bugs are fixed, yes? Regrettably not. Update: A subsequent update seems to have fixed most of the issues. Great to see them finally on top of this!

The tasks listed in the ‘goals’ section still aren’t all functional, notably ‘Message a friend’ and ‘Win in overtime.’ Thankfully, the mentoring function has been fixed since I originally looked at the game, so the issues above are only minor annoyances.

In addition to those, however, any NFL fan will probably find that the range of cards doesn’t appear to be as wide as you might expect. I mean, there’s only so many time that you can draw chunky Jets linebacker Mike DeVito when you have your hopes on a Adrian Peterson or RGIII… The level of difficulty is unusual too, as the game start out easy as pie, but when you graduate to veteran, winning is the later stages is suddenly impossible unless you shell out for gold to buy premium cards (which I guess is the business model).

In any case, I should say that it’s not a bad game overall. But I’m disappointed that the minor issues were not fixed before this ‘official’ release, because otherwise I think the game has a lot of potential. Football fans could also try out DeNA’s recently released NFL Matchups, which looks to be almost the same game, although I have yet to try it out yet.

And if the card battle games don’t cut it for you, there’s always that little thing called the Superbowl coming up soon (Prediction: Niners 34 – Ravens 31).

We’ve had a few fun 3D printing stories over the past few weeks. You may recall this 3D printing photo studio from Xi’an, China which prints a miniature bust of the customer in just a few hours after the initial photo is snapped. But just across the water in Japan, the folks at Fab Cafe Tokyo are cooking up some 3D printing goodness that is just a little bit sweeter, and just in time for Valentine’s day.

In early February, Fab Cafe will hold a workshop for women where they can make 3D chocolates modeled from their own face using a 3D printer and scanner. The workshop will be held on consecutive Saturdays, February 2nd and 9th, and participants will be able to learn about 3D modeling. You’ll also have a chance to create a mould, from which you can later make your own chocolate replicas.

This particular event is targeting women, since the Valentine’s Day custom in Japan is for women to give chocolate to men. Fab Cafe notes that they are considering a similar event for men later, so there might be one leading up to ‘White Day,’ which is when men reciprocate by giving ladies something in return.

The workshop will cost 6000 yen (about $68), but for the information you’ll take away, not to mention the chocolate, it looks to be a pretty awesome deal. For our female readers in Japan, you can find out more details over on the Fab Cafe website.

(Via Chiho Komoriya on Japanese VW)

Back in December we got word that Cinemacraft had raised a new round of funding. Its Videogram service, as you may recall, is a handy service that gives users a paneled, comic book style preview of online videos.

The startup recently moved from Tokyo to Silicon Valley to join the 500 Startups accelerator program, and since then it has made some progress with its HTML5 Videogram site. This latest iteration lets users start videos on the panel or frame which they find most appealing, skipping over parts that might be boring.

Under the ‘share’ function, there’s also now a new feature that lets you pin that particular frame to Pinterest, or you can share the clip to social networks or send it by email.

The company is working on native mobile apps as well for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and those should be coming soon.

If you’d like to get an idea for how the new Videogram functions work, you can check out the embedded video below, or head over to the site to create a Videogram of your own.

Last fall we told you about Hong Kong-based startup Viss (www.viss.me), which encourages its users to share fashion photos and follow their favorite trends on the Viss network. Since that time, we’ve received an update on how the company and its trendy mobile app are doing. Yesterday the company just pushed new updates for its iOS and Android applications, and this new iteration contains an interesting feature.

The latest version of the app includes a ‘Shop the look’ function, which helps users easily click through on interesting clothes items they seen in photos to product pages where they can buy those items. I’m told that Viss does work with partner merchants in this way, and earns some affiliate payments or commission — which is smart.

The app was recently featured in Apple’s App Store’s fashion section, as well as the What’s Hot section in eight Asian countries. So far the Viss website has about 600,000 unique visitors, and 3.5 million monthly page views.

Since we last looked at it, Viss has also added integration for sharing to WeChat, which is certainly a big plus for users in the Greater China region. As we recently noted, WeChat now boasts 300 million users worldwide.

Viss’s CEO Leo Ku tells me that in 2013 the company hopes to work with more brands and online stores, as well as possibly bring in further rounds of investment to drive expansion of its current operations.

Yesterday I highlighted Gung Ho Entertainment’s (JASDAQ:3765) Princess Punt Sweets, a mobile game for iOS that has been doing well in the Japanese market. Gung Ho is of course most famous for its Puzzles & Dragons title, which has ruled the top grossing charts in Japan for about a year now.

But Puzzles & Dragons is apparently making some progress in South Korea as well, as Social Game Info points out that it is now the number three ranked app in the South Korea app store for iOS. As for Korea’s top grossing charts, P&D is currently 16th on iOS, and 24th on Android.

The English version of the game for iOS, which is targeting US markets, hasn’t seen the same success without any real traction to date since its launch back in November.

It’s pretty remarkable that P&D has reached the success that it has in Japan, and even in Korea, without leveraging either of the main game platforms like GREE or Mobage.

Puzzles & Dragons announced just a few weeks ago that it had reached the six million downloads milestone before December 31st. As Serkan Toto points out, that’s an impressive figure considering that there are only about 40 million smartphones in Japan.

Last week I mentioned a fun new Japanese mobile game called Princess Punt Sweets, from developer Gung Ho Entertainment. Admittedly, it’s a pretty weird game as your character, the princess, is tasked with kicking heroes into battle against the enemy.

According to the folks over at gamebiz.jp, the title – which so far has only launched for the Japanese market – has already reached a million downloads as of January 13th. That’s just 56 days since it was launched, which is certainly strong performance for just the Japanese market. The game was the top free iOS app in Japan a week ago, although currently it has slid to the 20th position.

But Princess Punt Sweets still ranks high on the top grossing app charts, sitting in sixth. One game that ranks ahead of it is the wildly popular Puzzles and Dragons, which is of course Gung Ho’s most successful game to date. That title has practically ruled the top grossing charts in Japan since its initial release back in February of 2012.

The previous Princess Punts game eventually got an English version, so I expect that with any luck this new title will as well. But if you’d like to try the older version, you can get it over on Apple’s app store.

Sad Octocat is sad…

Chinese developers are waking up to a little bad news this morning, as it looks like social coding platform Github has been blocked in China, according to the folks over on GigaOm. The article cites a Hacker News thread, where one commenter posits that this could be because of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s recent order to stop using train ticket plugins, one of which references a javascript file from Github.

On the bright side, anyone who is technically capable of using Github is probably smart enough to circumvent China’s Great Firewall with relative ease. This poses more of an inconvenience than anything else. Many people are using Github’s Pages (a feature which launched back in April) to host static blogs these days ¹, but I don’t think this functionality was what the net nanny was targeting. Nevertheless, I expect more than a few Chinese developers are probably finding their blogs blocked today as a result.

A Github spokesperson told The Next Web that they are in the process of investigating, but that they are “at least being partly blocked” by China’s Great Firewall. Github has over three million users in total, and we’ve inquired to find out how many of those are located in China. Update: A representative tells us that while they don’t have any regional breakdown of users, that China is the fourth highest visiting country to Github, and Beijing is the sixth ranked city. That’s more than I expected.

On a somewhat related note, another online code repository service, SourceForge, has been blocked in the past as well. But apparently the many instances when it was blocked were never permanent, so hopefully the Github’s block won’t be permanent either.

With Facebook still on the rise in Japan, things are only going to get tougher for domestic social network Mixi (TYO:2121). And while the company has been making efforts to adjust to the changing internet climate, today the company announced that it will fold two such efforts.

We previously wrote about the company’s subscription commerce initiative Petite Jete, a members only fashion site that charged young women a fee to receive selected items of clothing by mail each month. Mixi had limited the membership to 1,000 users at the beginning, but regrettably they didn’t have to worry about surplus demand, and IT Media reports that the service only mustered a few hundred users.

The other Mixi property that will close is smartphone avatar community Mixi Park. That service was opened last September in cooperation with Konami (NYSE:KNM) ¹, who planned to use it as a platform for games. But like Petite Jete, this venture didn’t quite go as expected, and the users accumulated were far less than originally hoped (although specific numbers were not disclosed).

Mixi Park will stop selling its Premium P Coin virtual currency at the end of January, and close the service entirely on March 31. On April 1st, they will refund remaining virtual currency to users. More details are posted on the service’s app pages (iOS, Android).

Mixi Park, closing soon

We’ve written many times about how Singapore is a great place to do business, with lots of support available via different avenues for young startups. But collecting funds from private sources can still be difficult, and that’s a problem that local startup Crowdonomic hopes to address.

The company bills itself as the first crowdsourcing platform for startups in Asia, and is planning to launch on January 23rd featuring six local fundraising campaigns to start, including Eden Story, FlagaHero, and Video Guide Singapore. Each one will be targeting about S$30,000 to start. This launch follows the Crowdonomic’s private beta which began back in November.

The system is rewards-based, so if someone decides to support a given startup they could be given certain privileges in return for their support, such as early access.

Founder Leo Shimada

The company’s founder Leo Shimada explained in the announcement:

Our ultimate goal is to help entrepreneurs by addressing a key pain point – the funding gap. Since the market, or “crowd”, decides who to fund, it offers a more democratic alternative to how capital is allocated. We aim to have a higher standard of service delivery based on our deeper understanding of client start-up needs.

As for Crowdonomic’s own funding, it is backed by unspecified angels and VCs across Asia and the United States.

It’s nice to see a service like this spring up, not only because it provides another funding option for local startups, but also because it means that the companies funded will ostensibly get money because of widespread public support and approval for their idea. Check out Crowdonomic’s promotional infographic below:

I’ve been raving about Japanese tower defense game Battle Cats ever since it first came out for iOS late last year. Earlier this month the title was released for Android too, and has been doing especially well in its home market of Japan in its first few weeks.

The game features crazy varieties of cats (Afro Cat, Beautiful Legs Cat, and Macho Cat are just a few examples) attacking an even crazier collection of enemies. And since last week, it has occupied the number two spot on Google Play’s top new free apps ranking, just behind Line Bubble. Given that Battle Cats doesn’t benefit from the Line chat app distribution channel that Line Bubble has, this is as good as number one in my book ¹.

The app is also faring well in the top grossing apps section on Google Play, currently ranked 17th. As for iOS, Battle Cats is currently ranked second in the strategy category, fifth in similation, and 42nd overall in the free category.

I’m still playing it, but I’ve hit a bit of a wall in the final stage of chapter three, and I’m wishing that I had saved my cat food to buy really powerful cats rather than splurging on a useful Afro Cat (Yes, I too cannot believe I just wrote that sentence). If you’re just starting out with Battle Cats, I would advise that you try to save up cat food using invite codes and maybe buy the expensive Kung Fu Cat, or even the SM-cat or Bondage Cat (I can’t believe I wrote that sentence either).

In any case, it’s a really fun game and I hope you enjoy it. If you have any tips, let us know in the comments!

Update: According to Gamebiz.jp, Battle Cats has also just surpassed a million downloads. This is just 67 days since it was originally released for iOS.

Hot on the heels of last week’s rebranding announcement, Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432) has announced a major partnership today with game developer and publisher Nexon (TYO:3659). The tie-up will see new Nexon games coming over DeNA’s Mobage platform for both Japanese and global users. DeNA will also provide marketing and user acquisition support for Nexon titles.

DeNA already had a partnership in place with Japanese game developer Gloops, which was subsequently acquired by Nexon last October for the whopping sum of $36.5 billion yen ¹.

According to the announcement, Nexon and Gloops are planning many new English titles for Mobage this year, as well as 10 titles for Mobage Japan. Nexon’s president and CEO noted that the agreement helps in “extending Nexon’s mobile strategy” and “growing its presence in the expanding global mobile market.”

DeNA’s biggest hit on the Mobage platform in 2012 was Rage of Bahamut by far, a title developed by Cygames. Back in December we saw that title surpass the lofty milestone of 10 million users.

at Line HQ, just before the milestone was reached

As we mentioned in our post yesterday, NHN Japan’s Line application has been slowly creeping up on the impressive milestone of 100 million users recently. And it appears as though the company has just broken through, as its user counter (which it set up a few days ago to mark the occasion) has just rolled over.

Over on the Line Facebook page, they’ve been sharing pictures of what looks to be a big soiree (see above) over at Line headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo. Lime Line green balloons are decorating the place, and a big projection of the user count is featured on a wall. the company also has a commemorative video which you can see below. Some of the testimonials come across as a super scripted, but it’s still sort of neat.

Yesterday, we took a look at the major players in the mobile messaging wars, and Line ranks right up there with WeChat (300 million) and Kakao Talk (72 million) as the major players in Asia. But I expect their reach will begin to solidify in western markets this year too.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a clash with Facebook on the horizon, as the social giant begins to roll out free voice calls, which have been a major selling point for the afore mentioned chat apps. If Facebook can get its mobile act together, its offerings might begin to overlap significantly with many of these chat apps.

Tokyo Otaku Mode’s newly launched News section

Japan-based Tokyo Otaku Mode turned many heads over the past year, mostly because of its enormous fan base on its Facebook page, which now totals nearly 10 million (9.83 million to be exact). For a while, many people (myself included) wondered exactly what it is that this startup intended to do besides share pictures about Japanese Otaku culture on social networks.

But the company has been improving its main website, and today it is launching a key part of that page, with an Otaku news section. All news is in English and categorized into 12 subsections, such as anime, cosplay, figures, games, and manga.

Coinciding with the announcement of this new section, Tokyo Otaku Mode is concluding the ‘invitation-only’ period of access to its site. So now fans of anime, manga, etc., can freely view all the content on Tokyo Otaku Mode.

Visitors can also sign up and create their own content if they choose, as TOM also has a user generated content section.

I’m told that the company intends to drive traffic with its massive Facebook following, and eventually monetize that with some advertising on its main site, sort of in the same way that a site like 9gag does. There is also some possibility for e-commerce in the future as well.

It will be interesting to see where this young startup can go in 2013. So far its popularity – at least on Facebook – has been nothing short of meteoric.

Based in Fukuoka, Japan, Cacoo is an online collaborative design service which we have featured a few times before. With over 700,000 users worldwide, the service has rolled out a number of fun features since it was first launched, including a stencil store and Google Hangouts integration.

And now Cacoo is taking things a step further, unveiling Cacoo for Enterprise. So now companies can roll their own Cacoo on their own private network, rather than use the regular version of Cacoo on the web. They can then customize user rules and access, according to their own preferences. The basic licensing price is listed as $2000 for one year, with additional costs for each user you wish to add. More details are on the Cacoo website.

Cacoo is a pretty handy tool, and if you haven’t tried it yet, we recommend you do so. We aren’t designers, but we’ve even made use of Cacoo on occasion — see this graphic which my colleague Charlie put together for example.

The Cacoo team also announced today via its blog that it will be embarking on a Southeast Asia tour in the coming months. February will see them visit Bankok, Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta, and Bandung, with visits to Makati, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore in March.

(Via CNet Japan)

KDDI Corporation (TYO:9433) has just announced that it will be solidifying its partnership with Japanese app publisher 3rdKind by way of funding though its Open Innovation Fund. The funding amount was not disclosed.

The intent is to help 3rdKind further grow and “expand its Asian publishing business” with the goal of being the leading publisher in the region.

KDDI points out that since its publishing partnership with 3rdKind (which covers iOS, Android, and KDDI’s auSmartPass) was established last summer, many overseas games have been delivered to the Japanese market as a result. One of the major successes has been the social game Happy Street, as well as iBlastMoki, Stardunk, and Cross Finger.

KDDI’s five billion yen ($57 million) Open Innovation fund was established about a year ago and is managed by Global Brain Corporation. It has previously funded a number of startups, including Giftee.

3rdKind also works with NTT Docomo, as we noted last year.

Line will soon hit 100M users

Yesterday we pointed out that Chinese chat application WeChat (known as Weixin in Chinese) had surpassed the 300 million user mark. And just yesterday evening, apparently not wanting to be outdone, NHN Japan’s Line put a teaser site online saying that it would soon pass the 100 million user milestone.

Both feats are astounding, considering that these chat apps have only been around for a relatively short time. Given that we now have reasonably up to date figures for many of the major chat app players, let’s take a moment to compare their progress as we head into 2013:

Of course, WhatsApp is not included on this list. Its user numbers are tough to pinpoint, but word on the street is that they total between 200 and 300 million. It will be interesting to see if WhatsApp can continue as a paid service, with so many free up-and-comers. Many of these Asian players are expected to make a stronger push into Western markets this year, so I would expect the folks at WhatsApp are worried. I don’t use the application, but my colleague Willis also expressed some skepticism about WhatsApp recently.

There are other new players on the scene as well, including DeNA’s Comm which recently announced it had five million downloads as of this past December. GREE Messenger just burst onto the scene as well, although its offering is still sort of beta, and I expect a marketing blitz will come sometime soon, starting in Japan.

This one was conducted by Comnico, Nifty, and Lifemedia, who polled 776 young adults, specifically those in the 19 to 20 demographic. When asked which social service they use most, 42.5 percent of respondents said it was Twitter. The answer skews even more towards Twitter among females in the polling group, with 51.5 percent voting for the popular microblog. Among both men and women, Line came second and Facebook third.

from Comnico, with some translations added by me

But as we have said before on this blog, Facebook’s momentum in Japan shouldn’t be underestimated. For the survey in question, 41.3 percent of respondents said that Facebook (NASDAQ:FB ) is the network which they would most like to try in the future, citing its usefulness for job hunting and for connecting with people around the world. SocialBakers currently has Japan’s Facebook population at about 16.9 million, which is about 13 percent of the population.

As with all surveys we can’t really place too much weight in any single poll. But I thought we’d share this one, in the interests of getting a little bit closer to an accurate understanding of the big picture.

(Via PC World)

We have features as many startups from the Philippines as we should have over the past year, but there are certainly some remarkable ones in that group. Startup Asia alum Payroll Hero immediately springs to mind, having recently been awarded ‘Startup of the Year’ in the country.

Startups in the Philippines have something special to look forward to next month, as Startup Labs, a global co-investment program focusing on emerging markets, has just announced that it is coming to Manila next month with the intention to invest.

They hope to find the most promising tech startups in the region, and partner with local investors to pursue standout growth opportunities. Local investment partners will include Ideaspace, Siemer & Associates, and ICCP Venture partners.

For startups in the Philippines who want to apply, the deadline is January 20th, with pitching sessions scheduled for the first week in February. You can head over to the Startup Labs website if you’d like to throw your hat in the ring.

As for Vietnam, Startup Labs has what looks like a similar plan in store, with partner investors include DFJVina Capital, CyberAgent Ventures, Savvi Angel Group, and PVNI Angel Group. For Vietnamese startups who want to apply, you can do so here.

For the year 2013, Startup Labs aspires to make 25 such visits in cities around the world, with the aim of funding more than 125 startups in partnership with local investors. The group says that it typically will do about five deals in a city, although it doesn’t have any minimum or maximum number set. The full list of cities is here, and as you can see, India is on tap for February too, and Malaysia is coming after that in March. Previously Startup Labs also dropped in on Taiwan as well.

We have previously seen Japanese companies eyeing Indonesia in particular (see GREE Ventures and CyberAgent Ventures), but we haven’t seen them explore the Philippines or Vietnam as much. So it’s certainly encouraging to see investors turn their eyes towards both the Philippines and Vietnam.

There’s a wacky creativity behind some Japanese-made games that I really enjoy. It’s the same humorous spirit that went into Ponus’s Battle Cats, and I suppose its probably the same sort of notion that led earlier pioneers to create strange characters like Mario Bros and Kirby.

I couldn’t help but think about those games as I tried to rationalize what must have been going through the minds of the folks at Gung Ho Entertainment (JASDAQ:3765) when they came up with Princess Punt, an unusual game where you play a princess who sends her heroes into battle with a good swift kick. Gung Ho’s recent follow-up, Princess Punt Sweets, is my first introduction to the strange mobile game. So far since its release earlier this week, Princess Punt Sweets has been doing well on the charts in Japan, becoming the top free iOS app on Monday, where it currently still sits. The title is in Japanese only, but you can play the previous Princess Punt in English if you’d like.

While I like the creative character concept, the game clearly borrows very liberally from Rovio’s Angry Birds. The princess’s kick is pretty much the same mechanic as Rovio’s slingshot, and some of the enemy structures can look pretty similar at times as well. In addition, the three star rating for level completion is very much like Angry Birds. But I guess half the mobile game devs in the world are using this by now.

Where Princess Punt Sweet has made an improvement, however, is by putting enemies together in sequence in a round. So when you have finished punting your way past the first group of bad guys, you simple run past whatever is left of them to face the next enemies in that particular level. There are also gacha elements in the game, as well as the ability to level up your heroes as you progress through levels. I should note that I experienced a few error alerts when playing, so at this early stage it looks like there are still some bugs to work through.

As you may know, Gung Ho is best known for its hit game Puzzles and Dragons. I have yet to get really hooked on that title, but it’s available on the US App Store if you’d like to give it a try. If Princess Punt Sweets can manage even a fraction of the popularity of Puzzles and Dragons, then I’m sure everyone at Gung Ho will be delighted.

Readers may remember that I was very enthusiastic about Japanese finance application Zaim. And while I’m pretty happy with that app, I was curious to come across a Korean-made alternative called M-Story.

From Korean developer ParkPill, the iOS app boasts one interesting feature that caught my attention in particular, that being the ability to export all your data to a CSV file, which can then be used in your preferred spreadsheet program (Excel, Numbers, or Google Spreadsheets).

In comparison to Zaim, M-Story doesn’t require you to add too much information. It just asks you to specify what you bought and how much you paid for it. While M-Story has been around for a while, it recently added iCloud backup and Retina display support as well, both big pluses. There’s a lock feature to ensure your finances are kept private, which I suppose would come in handy to anyone who doesn’t implement iOS’s normal lock screen ¹.

Unlike Zaim, M-Story is a paid application for iPhone and iPad. But at just 99 cents, it still looks to be a bargain. I recommend you give it a try and let us know what you think. I’m looking forward to giving it a test run over the next few weeks.

The folks over at Japanese tech blog AppBank have created a short video demo which you can check out below. The interface here is in Japanese, but the app comes in English too.

Singapore-based e-menu startup Tabsquare has announced today that it has raised S$589,000 (or about $480,000) in funding from local incubator Get2Volume, along with co-funding from Singapore’s National Research Foundation. The startup aspires to use the funds to further develop its restaurant e-menu system.

The startup, founded by three graduates from INSEAD, uses a tablet-based solution, which integrates cloud-based data storage, inventory managment, CRM, and point-of-sales systems. There is also multi-language support on the customer side, as well as the capability to vary your pricing according to the time of day, or day of the week.

The startup claims that this results in lower waiting times, and a more engaging experience for the customer. For the restaurant, it gets all the afore-mentioned services for a monthly fee.

In addition to its e-menu solution, the startup also has a repertoire of other tablet-based solutions for different sectors of the hospitality industry, such one for hotels, and another for small kiosks. Mike Holt, the CEO of Get2Volume added in the announcement:

While there are many restaurant back end systems that manage efficiencies and inventory, there is little that addresses front-end efficiency management and consumer experience in the restaurant. […] We are pleased to incubate and fund Tabsquare to continue to grow its cloud-based retail management system.

We’ve written much in the past about how individuals and organizations outside of China are making use of Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) Weibo microblogging platform in order to reach Chinese speaking netizens. Whether it’s famous celebrities (see Tom Cruise, Emma Watson, Brad Pitt) or politicians (from Australia, England, Japan) or brands — Weibo appears to be the medium of choice.

College recruiting appears to be the latest use for Weibo, as Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering recently held a group chat on its Sina Weibo page in order to answer questions from prospective students for its graduate program.

In total, there were 150 participants, with 80 questions posted in the short span of an hour. Graduates and current students in the program were also available to answer questions. You can get an idea of the type of inquiries that were asked here.

Duke is also active on Renren as well, giving it a pretty progressive Chinese social media strategy.

While it’s no surprise that more and more schools are enlisting the help of social media tools in recruiting these days, it’s interesting to see U.S. schools go so far as to join Chinese platforms to recruit Chinese students. I wonder how active most Chinese universities are in comparison, assuming they are active at all?

On a somewhat related note, we recently wrote about India’s top business school, IIM-A, which partnered with LinkedIn to help connect students to recruiters.

Mobile usage in Tokyo, visualized before and after the 3/11 earthquake

When the tragic earthquake hit Japan back in March of 2011, mobile communications were severely disrupted in the affected regions, even in metropolitan Tokyo. The University of Tokyo’s Center for Spatial Information Science has put together an incredible visualization which dramatically illustrates how mobile activity almost completely stops in the minutes after the earthquake hit at 14:46PM on that afternoon.

In the video below, anonymized geo-speatial data from Zenrin DataCom shows the movement of people in the city throughout the day ¹. Time is shown progressing in the bottom right corner. As you can see, mobile movement is most intense during the morning rush hour between 8AM and 9AM, with the majority of movement concentrated on major train lines.

But just after the earthquake hits in the afternoon, mobile activity ‘goes dark’ so to speak. Train service was also interrupted, and you can see that people don’t really resume movement until late in the evening, and even then it was at just a fraction of its usual pace. You can check out the video for yourself below to see how the day progresses in its entirety, and how mobile activity recovers in later that night and the next morning.

As we pointed out last year, even after Japanese mobile carriers pledged to improve network infrastructure, they still experienced some problems in 2012, most notably Docomo, who attributed some problems to increased VoIP activity.

If you enjoy slashy, swipy smartphones games like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja, you might also like a fun new iOS title from Russia’s Anton Roshchine Studio called To Bee or Not to Bear.

The game pits busy builder bees against hungry, destructive bears who fly on screen tethered to firehoses trying to steal honey from your hive. Your job is to help out the bees by cutting loose the bears with a swipe of your finger so they fall to the ground.

The game is good fun, although the difficulty level is higher than I expected for such a cutesy title. Occasionally I found that a single level can be frustratingly difficult, as it can be amazingly tricky to break out of the equilibrium of bees building and bears stealing. The artwork is pretty solid though, and overall its an enjoyable game.

AR Studio is apparently hoping to attract some of the Chinese market, going so far as to put its homepage’s default navigation menu Chinese. The folks over at Chinese tech blog Technode astutely point out that since Cut the Rope (from Russian developer Zeptolab) found China to be its biggest market, that perhaps AR Studio has its eyes on a similar prize. The app itself has multiple language options, including English and Chinese.

Currently the iPhone version of the game is available on the app store for 99 cents and there’s a HD version available for iPad for $2.99. You can check out a video demo of gameplay below, as well as screenshots.

Today cloud-based customer service solution provider Zendesk has announced that it now has more than 25,000 customers around the world. And the company is pointing out that over the next year it hopes that an increasing percentage of its users will be from the Asia region.

We’re told that in 2012, the service enjoyed 150 percent year-on-year growth for the Asia region, which is pretty good considering that the company only established APAC operations back in July of 2011.

Zendesk’s vice president and managing director in the Asia Pacific region, Michael Hansen, says they are approaching a regional milestone for the company, explaining “We are on track to hit 1,000 Asian customers by March and we want to see that number grow significantly by the end of the year and beyond.”

That’s still just around four percent of its global customer base, but given the company’s increased focus on Asia, we can expect this to grow in 2013. Of course, this doesn’t include the 1,500+ customers that Zendesk has in Australia and New Zealand.

When we interviewed Michael Hansen back in September, he pointed out that Zendesk is hoping to make progress in Japan as well. The company established an office there back in May. Meanwhile its progress in India has been solid, doubling its customer base, and boasting prominent clients such as e-commerce giant Homeshop18.

In 2012 Zendesk raised $60 million in funding in order to help drive global expansion, including the afore-mentioned efforts in the Asia region. It also opened an APAC development center in Melbourne which is expected to create 20 new jobs by the end of this year.

For more general information on how Zendesk fared over the past year, you can check out their ‘2012 highlights’ infographic below.

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) announced today that it will soon be accepting preorders for a new model of smartphone that specifically targets the pre-teen demographic. The Android 4.0 device will we priced at a discounted rate of 2,980 yen per month (about $34) as part of an introductory offer.

Dubbed as a ‘Smartphone for Juniors,’ the handset is made by Sharp and is set to go on sale in early February. It lets parents impose certain restrictions like maximum call time or restricted calling periods, and it includes content and applications tailored specifically for pre-teens ¹. The phone is also water-resistant, and the smaller form factor is made to fit in children’s hands. It has a 1.5 GHz processor, a 12.1 megapixel camera, and is available in three colors: blue, pink, and white.

Docomo handset ‘for girls’

It’s interesting to see smartphones specifically tailored to certain segments of the Japanese population in this way. (Maybe this is what you have to do when you don’t have the iPhone?) Docomo also sells a sort of beginner smartphone in its Rakuraku model. That handset aspires to be easy to operate, especially for elderly users who might be new to smartphones and their various functions.

So perhaps it’s a good idea to Docomo to offer its ‘Smartphone for Juniors’ since any kids carrying a Rakuraku smartphone would probably run the risk of being teased for having a ‘grandma’ phone!

Last year Docomo also released “For Girls” handsets as well, marked by an uber-cute pink design with special services targeting young women.

Recently we looked back on what was a pretty busy year for Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432). The internet and social games company has expanded aggressively both at home and abroad. And today the company kicked off 2013 with a few interesting changes, including a brand new logo as you can see on the right, and a new slogan “Delight and Impact the World.” This means that DeNA’s global subsidiaries will uniformly referred to by their region name, i.e. ngmoco in the US will be called DeNA San Francisco. You can see a list of all locations here.

Included in this rebranding are its Bidders.jp e-commerce service, which will now be called DeNA Shopping. It now lives on a new URL, at dena-ec.com. DeNA’s Skygate travel service will subsequently be known as DeNA Travel.

The company also unveiled plans for a new social music called Groovy. It will be available in Japan for both iOS and Android. This comes as a result of DeNA acquiring an existing music app, Discodeer, from Japanese tech company United. Launched in December of 2011, that app once held the top spot in the music category on the Apple App Store, passing one million downloads in its first four months, and 1.5 million after 10 months. DeNA says that it will add social networking and music distribution features and launch the app within the quarter.

More than 20 content partners on board for Groovy, including Sony Music, Universal Music, and EMI Music Japan, and will feature over a million songs. It remains to be seen exactly how the app will be a social one, but we look forward to finding out.

5 Million Downloads for Comm ¶

DeNA also announced that its Comm mobile messenger service has surpassed the 5 million downloads milestone, which is pretty impressive considering that the service only just launched back in October. The app was promoted heavily in Japan with television ads, and that strategy appears to have paid off.

Today’s press conference (in Japanese) can be replayed via DeNA’s Ustream channel.

Singapore-based loyalty service provider Gimmie has announced that it has received S$639,000 (about US$520,000) from various investors, led by WaveMaker Labs in partnership with the Singapore National Research Foundation. This round of funding will be used to help Gimmie expand to other regions in Asia.

Gimmie’s CEO David Ng explained in the announcement that the company’s first area of expansion will be Indonesia. Helping them make a push in that country will be Jakarta’s Ideosource, which also participated in this funding round.

As I understand it, Gimmie differs from other loyalty programs used by mobile publishers in that it doesn’t require you to leave the application to be rewarded. Instead, users can be rewarded for criteria such as their playing time, reaching new levels, or subscribing to certain content.

WaveMaker’s managing partner Debneel Mukherjee explained that the recent mobile boom in the region means that the market is ripe for a service provider like Gimmie:

With the mobile internet penetration poised for a quantum leap, across Asia, in the next few years, Gimmie is well placed to harness this untapped opportunity and become the leading provider of customized loyalty solutions for digital media businesses, in the region.

You can learn a little more about Gimmie in their fun promo video below.

Thailand-based game studio Pocket Playlab has recently released a fun puzzle game for iPhone called Lost Cubes. The folks over at Kotaku rightfully points out that the title is pretty much a clone of Flow Free, in that you have to connect multiple cube pairs on a grid without connecting lines crossing one another. So if you like that puzzle game, you’ll be sure to like this as well.

I’ve been giving it a light trial run over the past couple of days, and Lost Cubes is a fun casual title. At times it’s a little bit too casual, as the early stages are pretty easy. But eventually the puzzles get a little bit trickier, and require a little bit of creative thinking in order to solve them.

The level select is in the style of Angry Birds, as is the scoring system which awards you one, two, or three stars based on your point total for that round. And while the folks at Pocket Playlab aren’t going to win any points for originality in game design, the artwork for Lost Cubes is pretty solid as you can see the from trailer and screenshots below.

I understand that Lost Cubes is the studio’s initial effort at creating a first party title. It has previously worked on third party games, and you can browse its portfolio here.

The game is free to play, but is supported by ads. Pocket Playlab boasts that in the first 24 hours after its release that more than a million levels were played on Lost Cubes. It’s doing respectably well in the US app store, ranked fourth in the family category and fifth among puzzle games.

If you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can download it now over on the app store.

India’s popular online food and restaurant guide, Zomato, has announced that it is expanding to include a section for London, England. The service subsequently has coverage of popular food spots in 18 cities in India, the UAE, Sri Lanka, and now the United Kingdom too.

According to the announcement, the London section now has over 14,000 restaurants listed, and they are adding content for about 500 more per day. Initially I thought that the high population of Indian emigrants in the UK might have been a motivating factor in Zomato’s decision to roll out London listings. But I’m told by a Zomato representative that while it is a certainly an advantage in getting a kickstart there, it was not one of the most significant factors. According to the company’s blog, the initial idea appears to have been somewhat whimsical. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal writes:

The evening of November 20th, 2012, sipping tea in our office, we were discussing the beauty of London during Christmas. Naturally, the conversation steered towards restaurants in London and how much fun it would be to spend Christmas in London while eating at some of the best restaurants in the world. Somewhere in the middle of the casual banter, someone jokingly said, “This Christmas, Zomato is coming to London”. This was followed by complete silence… and some goosebumps.

If you’d like to try out the new Zomato London section, you can head over to zomato.com/london. Right now access is by invitation only, but if you request one I expect the folks at Zomato will let you in.

The company aspires to further expand later in the year, with more coverage in Europe, the Middle East, and South East Asia, although a representative says they have yet to settle on any specific cities.

Currently Zomato sees more than 9 million people each month using its services, so it will be interesting to see how quickly and how far the New Delhi-based company can grow beyond that user base.

photo: autoblog.com

While we’re not attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we are paying close attention to news coming out of the annual tech event. Among all the headlines, American car-maker Ford (NYSE:F) made a play to bring more mobile applications to its Sync voice-activated system, and surprisingly China’s most popular microblog, Sina Weibo, is one of nine new apps to be added.

According to the announcement, Ford’s collaboration with Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) makes the Weibo mobile app available in the vehicle via the AppLink API, allowing drivers to access news, weather, microblogging, and location-based services using voice control.

Drivers can connect their phone to the Sync system, and use apps which Ford supports. But the car-maker says it doesn’t allow certain kinds of apps that would be a visual distraction, such as any video or rich imagery apps, games, or any application that requires extensive reading.

Other new apps to join Ford’s AppLink ecosystem are The Wall Street Journal, Amazon Cloud Player, Rhapsody, Glympse, and Aha Radio.

The timing for Ford to offer support for Chinese services with AppLink couldn’t be better, as a new ban on using cell phones while driving just went into effect on New Year’s Day ¹, and we subsequently saw numerous reports of consumers buying up hands-free Bluetooth headsets as a result. It will be interesting to see if Ford can benefit from the new law in a similar way.

(Via LiveScience.com)

Line advertised on a train in Taiwan

It was a pretty big year for NHN Japan and its Line chat application in 2012. And according to a Taiwanese news report, the company plans to be equally ambitious this year as well. Focus Taiwan cites NHN representatives as saying that the company is targeting 300 to 400 million users by year’s end.

That would be a truly stunning figure for a service that only launched back in mid-2011. The report quotes Kang Hyun-bin, the head of Line business at NHN Corp in South Korea as saying that the chat app is expected to pass 100 million users this month.

In Taiwan specifically, Line has more than 10 million users, and Kang noted that NHN could open a branch office there soon. As we noted last week, NHN has gone so far as to advertise on trains in Taiwan, with QR codes displayed inside train cars so passengers can read and receive events from the application.

NHN’s lofty goal of 300 to 400 million users would put it into a stratosphere where only a few social giants have gone before. While user numbers for all social networks can be tricky to get a handle on, only Facebook, Twitter, Qzone, Google+, and Sina Weibo are playing at that level ¹.

Similarly, another Japanese social player also expressed ambitions to take his company to such a level. GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka said back in 2011 that he hoped his social games company could one day hit between 500 million and a billion users. The social gaming giant, recently launched a test version of its own chat application, ostensibly in an effort to keep up with the meteoric rise of Line, which has been successfully using chat as a games distribution platform.

Videos are triggered on screens above when you take a hanger from the rack

The folks at Japan’s TeamLab are a pretty creative bunch. I first met up with them at a Tokyo Maker fair a few years back, where they had cleverly hacked a Wii balance board to convert it into a diet chair. But I was surprised to see that they were also the brains behind a very creative shopping display that has been turning a few heads in Japan recently.

The group has an installation of its teamLabHanger product currently in operation at a Vanquish store in Ikebukuro. When an item of clothing on a hanger is removed from the rack, it triggers video and audio on a screen overhead. Improving on its interactive hangers system from last year which showed how clothes would look when worn, this latest installation is more entertaining, and… well… stimulating.

According to Diginfo News (who have a great video demo of the system below), the current system is running a campaign that features some female artists and celebrities. I’m not sure who they are exactly, but I hope they aren’t cold…

It’s an interesting innovation, although I’m curious to know if something like this would increase sales enough to warrant the cost of installation.

Related readings:

• Two New Virtual Shops Open in Japan Using Panoplaza
• Korea’s Emart Creates QR Codes With Shadows in Midday Sun

Japanese game developer Cygames (a CyberAgent subsidiary) has announced today that its social games portfolio has amassed more than 20 million registered users since the company came into being back in May of 2011.

As you may know, Cygames is the developer behind the wildly popular card battle game Rage of Bahamut, perhaps the most globally successful mobile game export put forth by any Japanese company on a smartphone. Of the 20 million registered users that Cygames is boasting of today, about half of those come from Bahamut alone, as the game passed 10 million users worldwide just a few days before Christmas.

The folks over at Gamebiz.jp point out that Cygames had 2.6 billion yen (almost $30 million) in net income in the fiscal year ended September 2012, which is a pretty astronomical growth metric for such a young company.

As you may recall, DeNA (TYO:2432) – who distributes Rage of Bahamut on its Mobage platform – saw enough promise in Cygames this past year to buy up a 20 percent stake in the company for the price of $92 million.

Cygames will certainly be a hot company to watch moving forward in the new year, so stay tuned to even more fun mobile games from them!

I really hope that 2013 is not the year that we see the ever so ridiculous term ‘phablet’ go mainstream. But if mobile companies continue to push out 5-inch and 6-inch handsets this year, we might be in for a rough year. Everyone’s favorite Chinese manufacturer, Huawei, has announced a number of new oversized smartphones at CES today, most notably the 6.1-inch Ascend Mate ¹.

The company has dubbed this monster the “world’s biggest smartphone” and it has a 720p display, with a 4050mAh battery to ensure that the screen has adequate juice. It runs on Android 4.1, and has an 8 megapixel camera.

Ascend D2

Huawei also unveiled a marginally less monstrous smartphone at CES, in the 5-inch Ascend D2, which comes with a 1080p display, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, and a 13 megapixel camera. While the Ascend Mate appears to have turned more heads at the show, the D2 could be a more appealing phone for the masses. Huawei also highlighted its splash proof feature, which makes me wonder if Huawei is planning to introduce the D2 to Japan where waterproofing is more in demand among consumers.

It will be interesting to see if consumers actually bite on Huawei-branded smartphones this year. The company has been embroiled in controversy over the past year in relation to its network equipment business. I think that controversy will certainly be an obstacle to the company as it tries to develop its smartphone brand in markets abroad. So it will be interesting to keep an eye on how many smartphones the company manages to ship this year. Stay tuned! (Via The Verge)

Photo: pchome.net

I was surprised to hear that among a few new traffic safety laws to go into place in China as of January 1st, 2013, was a ban on using cell phones while driving. And according to a few different sources, the new rule has resulted in a sudden surge in Bluetooth headset sales in the country.

Over on Alibaba’s blog, the company points out that searches for Bluetooth headsets on its Taobao online marketplace shot up by 43.1 percent last week, which is over three times the amount of searches seen in the same time the previous year.

Similarly Shanxi News Online reports that in Taiyuan city many mobile stores say that Bluetooth headsets have been selling out after the new law went into place, with one store salesman saying he sold 40 on New Year’s Day alone and has no more in stock.

The punishment for being caught using your mobile phone while driving is a two-point penalty and up to a 200 RMB fine (about $32). Of course, as with most laws in China – especially traffic laws – these new laws really don’t mean anything unless they are enforced. And I’ll be surprised if they are.

Drivers can take solace in the fact that another strict new law prohibiting the running of yellow lights has been reportedly scaled back. Instead of the original six point penalty, drivers will now receive ‘warnings and education’. In other words, yellow still means “step on it,” just as it always has.

Mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has issued an announcement in Japanese today apologizing that some minors were charged beyond the spending limits that the company put in place last April.

Between April 26 and September 7, GREE says that some 733 minors were affected by a system failure on feature phones which allowed them to spend more than the imposed restrictive spending limit (5,000 yen per month for under 15 years old; 10,000 yen per month for ages 16 to 19 ¹). The error affected some minors on feature phones, who used credit cards as their payment option.

GREE became aware of this error on September 6, and is refunding those over-charges, amounting to over 28 million yen (or about $322,000) in total.

It’s certainly not a good note to start the year on, but of course given the controversial Kompu Gacha issue that plagued GREE and other social gaming companies in 2012, it is wise for the company to publicly acknowledge and atone for the error in this manner.

GREE first introduced restrictive payments for minors back in April of last year (as Serkan Toto pointed out at the time), and so it appears that this failure/error occurred soon after that system went into place. GREE’s rival DeNA also implemented the same sort of cap just a few weeks afterwards. (Via NHK, including television report)

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened. Korean pop star PSY has been a phenomenon over the past year for his infectious Gangnam Style hit song, but now he’s getting the eight-bit treatment in a new iPhone game called Gangnam Style City.

The game is a side-scrolling platformer where you assume the role of the Korean rapper as he horse-dances across city rooftops. I’m not sure how exactly the game developer would account for PSY’s sudden interest in Parkour, but there it is. It’s a very simple but fun game where PSY has to collect coins and items, and avoid falling into gaps between buildings. He can also get items like bikes, cars, and planes to drive in too – although admittedly that’s not nearly as fun as horse dancing.

In addition to the retro graphics, the game comes complete with an ‘eight-bit’ version of the Gangnam Style song too which plays in the background ¹.

The new mobile title is available for free over on the app store for a limited time. I do recommend giving it a try, although if the price goes up to more than a buck or two, I’d take a pass on it. Gangnam Style City was just released over the weekend by Argentinian developer Voon, and it’s currently ranked in the top ten in the music category in 17 countries, including Italy and France (number one), as well as South Korea (at number three).

For those of you who were still in holiday mode during the past week, we’ve done our best to keep tabs on what was happening in the China tech space. Looking ahead to the new year, we expect that China will be in the news every bit as much as it was in 2012 — although we do hope that it’s for more favorable reasons.

1. Gougou, Notorious Chinese Pirate Search Engine, Shuts Down

Having been added to the U.S. Trade Representative copyright offenders report, Gougou.com has finally been shut own. Gougou is operated by Xunlei, who is hoping to clean up its act, perhaps in preparation for another attempt at an overseas IPO.

2. KuaiYong: Chinese Startup Enables iOS App Piracy w/o a Jailbreak

This Windows desktop application lets users install pirated apps without a jailbreak. It went offline briefly last week, but as I write this the KuaiYong site appears to be back up. It will be interesting to see how long this can remain available.

3. 3D-Printed, Smartphone-Controlled Drone by Chinese Startup AngelEyes

3D printing made a lot of headlines in 2012, and we expect that to continue in the new year. Here’s one example of a hardware startup from China which is crowdfunding an exciting 3D printing project. Sure, the HeX looks a lot like the AR Parrot Drone, but it’s still pretty fun. We hope it does well.

4. Chinese Trains Now Capable of Time Travel, Apparently

Yes, it’s a brand new year, but some things seem to never change. China’s Raily Ministry’s website is a prime example of this, as it doesn’t look to have improved very much over last year’s abomination.

5. Sina Weibo Breaks New Record for User Activity Over New Year’s Eve

If you thought Twitter was busy on New Year’s Eve, don’t forget about China’s favorite microblog Sina Weibo, where the first minute of 2013 saw 729,521 messages.

6. Gome Enters Into $160 Million Partnership with Qinqinbaby.com

In an effort to bring more mother-and-baby items onto its online shopping mall, Gome has tied up with Qinqinbaby.com. This helps it compete with Suning, who acquired Redbaby last year.

7. Study: Actually Only About 20,000 Twitter Users in China [INFOGRAPHIC]

Precise Twitter numbers for any country can be hard to pin down, and for China – where the service is blocked – that’s especially true. But this week we saw a fun graphic from one programmer who figures that there are only about 20,000 Twitter users in the Beijing time zone.

8. China’s Biggest Tech Trend of 2013 Will Be The Wall

Perhaps the most interesting story on China from the past week was Charlie’s look ahead at what could be a dismal year for the internet in China. Censorship looms large, but there are some other factors worth exploring here too.

That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you can click here or subscribe to our China RSS feed.

Things were a little slow getting back into gear after the holiday break, but there was still some interesting tech news happening over the past week. And when there wasn’t we took a moment to reflect back on the past year, and looked ahead to what the new year holds for tech in Asia. With that in mind, here are our favorite stories from the past week.

Enricko’s pick: Chinese Startup Enables iOS App Piracy Without a Jailbreak

This week saw China’s KuaiYong making headlines on a lot of tech sites, including ours. The founder is ballsy for not only operating an illegal business, but also for letting the world (including Apple’s lawyers) know exactly who is running the company.

Minh’s pick: Study: Actually Only About 20,000 Twitter Users in China [INFOGRAPHIC]

I chose this article for two reasons: I love Twitter, and I love statistics. It’s also cool to note that while Sina Weibo is still dominant in China, that at least a few mainland Chinese are managing to log on to Twitter since it got blocked in 2009. China’s Great Firewall is not to be messed with.

Rick’s Pick: Apple’s Annual Lucky Bag Sale Delivers for Japanese Fanboys

Apple’s annual grab bag sale in Japan is always fun to watch. And unfortunately most of us have no choice but to watch, because if you want to take advantage of the sale you need to line up the day before. But as we saw this year, some lucky shoppers walked away with far more than they actually paid for!

Steven’s pick: China’s Biggest Tech Trend of 2013 Will Be ‘The Wall’

Using the internet in China can often feel like banging one’s head against a brick wall, so I enjoyed this post from my colleague, Charlie. His post is not just referring to the notorious and censorious Great Firewall, but to a whole range of regulatory and regional geopolitical issues that will make the Chinese internet – and, indeed, China as a whole – even more isolated in this new year.

Willis’ pick: Vietnamese Tech News Sites, Give Us More Vietnam and Less Silicon Valley

Minh wrote a very bold post to highlight the ugly truth about the Vietnamese press. In fact, this applies not just to Vietnam, but I think most major media sites in Asia aren’t writing much about their own startup ecosystems. This also explains why blogs like TechinAsia.com exist.

Charlie’s pick: Tmall Now Lets US Food Companies Ship Directly to Chinese Consumers

Food safety is a big issue in China, and imported (safe) foods are becoming big business. Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing if the government doesn’t get involved to some degree.

It has been a pretty busy year in the mobile space in Japan. While the prevailing narrative in most western media has been the demise of Japanese tech companies, it’s important to note that there are some bright spots. Social gaming companies like DeNA (TYO:2432), GREE (TYO:3632), and even NHN Japan with its Line chat platform are all doing really interesting stuff on mobile.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking back at our coverage from 2012. For myself in particular as the Tokyo editor, that means reflecting on a crazy year in mobile gaming. It has been a year of rapid expansion outside of Japan for many of these companies, and we’re seeing some new types of games emerge along with new business models too. For more information on all this, click on over to our special year-in-review feature. It’s by no means complete, but we hope you find it useful:

[2012 in Review: Japanese Mobile Social Gaming & Other Highlights]

I think that game developers all over the world can certainly learn from many of these companies, as they try to push the envelope in the mobile gaming industry both at home and abroad. It will be interesting to watch them in 2013 as well!

From MMD, with some labels translated from Japanese

As we pointed out yesterday, 2012 was a pretty big year for NHN Japan’s Line chat app. But if you need further evidence of its popularity, MMD Laboratory has conducted a 2012 smartphone insights survey, and the results tell us a lot about how Japanese users are jumping on board the chat app bandwagon.

When 670 participants between the ages of 20 and 59 were asked about which application they use the most, Line was the most popular response at 16.2 percent. Facebook also fared well at 12.6 percent. Twitter was a distant third at 4.6 percent. GREE, Mixi, and Mobage took roughly a percentage point each as you can see in the chart above.

Looking at Japanese users’ preferred genres, you can really see a distinct change between this most recent survey and MMD’s previous one back in July. As you can see in the chart below, the amount of respondents who say they regularly use free voice calls or chat apps (like Line) has jumped from 28.4 percent to 40.0 percent. Usage for other genres has remained more or less the same among the most popular genres. I wouldn’t be surprised if this apparent trend is even more visible if younger smartphone users under the age of 20 had been included.

If you’d like to read more info about this survey in English, the What Japan Thinks blog has a great overview which I encourage you to check out in its entirety for more great info from this poll.

[Download image version of this chart]

We just received word from a representative of Singapore-based startup Sprooki that it will be partnering with YFind Technologies to offer its indoor positioning technology within its mobile, location-based platform. Readers may recall that Sprooki started out as a consumer facing app, but refocused on a white label solution to help shops and other retailers roll their own mobile campaigns.

The partnership with YFind appears to be a logical one. It’s another Singapore based player in the LBS game, with an intriguing mobile technology that uses wifi signals to determine position indoors. The startup raised about $1.2 million in series A funding this past summer.

Sprooki is going to integrate that positioning system into its mobile solution and campaign management platform, offering it to current and future clients. So that ostensibly means an improved offering for malls, department stores, and other retailers both in Singapore and around the Asia region. The director and co-founder of YFind, Melvin Yuan further explained:

A combined outdoor-indoor local marketing solution helps retailers to more accurately incentivize and measure foot-fall. It offers retailers the opportunity to combat showrooming through discrete targeting of offers and rewards based on metrics such as time in store, visit frequency or walk-out behavior.

When we last heard from Sprooki back in November, it had announced that its solution would be used by Singapore’s 313@Somerset mall. The startup also noted that it would be eyeing opportunities outside the country, including the Philippines and possibly Australia. This new agreement will also see YFind make their integrated solution available to clients in other regions such as the U.S.

This is part of our Japan 2012 in Review series, which you can find in its entirety here.

NHN Japan had a pretty crazy year in 2012. In retrospect, things really got busy for the company and its wildly successful chat app Line after it decided to get into the gaming business. But overall, 2012 has been a year of crazy growth, interesting business and distribution models, and a lot of flat-out fun in the mobile space. I thought we could run down though some of the highlights of our own coverage of the Line platform this year, particularly the second half of the year. I’ve also supplemented it with some links from social games expert Serkan Toto, whose website is a great resource if you want to follow stuff like this.

Expect even more from NHN Japan in 2013, as it will be giving Line more of an offline presence, starting with a new anime (Line Offline) coming to Tokyo Television next week, and perhaps more in the merchandising department a la Angry Birds.

December

• Japanese Chat App ‘Line’ Does Gangnam Style – 12/27
• ‘Line Play’ Virtual World Comes Out of Beta with a Million Users 12/18
• Line App Launches in China 12/12
• LINE Pop Racks Up 10 Million Downloads – In 12 Days | Dr. Serkan Toto 12/4

November

• Thailand Turns to Line App in an Effort to Hook More Travelers 11/29
• Line’s iOS Games Dominate Japanese App Store 11/29
• Line Gets 5 Additional Social Games | Dr. Serkan Toto 11/19

October

• Line Passes 70M Users 10/25
• After 97 Days: LINE Birzzle Hits 10 Million Downloads | Dr. Serkan Toto 10/12
• Japan’s Prime Minister’s Office Opens Account on Line, Closes its Weibo 10/5

September

• Line Surpasses 30 Million Users in Japan 9/27
• For LINE: Korea’s WeMade Signs Deal With NHN Japan For 6 Games | Dr. Serkan Toto 9/22

August

• For LINE: NHN Japan Inks Distribution Deal With Carrier KDDI [Social Networks] | Dr. Serkan Toto 8/31
• Chinese Developer Sells Fake Line Camera Application in Apple App Store 8/30
• Line Gets Coupon and Fortune Telling Features 8/22
• Line Camera Passes 10M Users in 117 Days, 3x Faster than Instagram 8/10
• Another Hit for NHN Japan with ‘Line Brush’ Drawing App 8/1

July

• NHN Japan’s Line App Passes 50 Million Users in 399 Days 7/26
• LINE and Telkomsel Add Special Stickers for Indonesian Users 7/13
• Line Birzzle Hits Number 1 in App Stores Around Asia 7/5
• Japan’s Line App Evolves into Platform, Expands into… Um… Everything 7/3
  • This was the perhaps the moment that changed everything for Line in 2012. It announced it would be launching a number of features, but in retrospect the one that really made the difference was adding games on top of its platform.

June

• Line App for Windows Phone Launches 6/12
• Line Passes 40 Million Users in 1 Year 6/6

First half of the year

• ‘Line Camera’ Launches 4/13
• Line Gets Desktop Apps for Mac and PC 3/7
• Line Cited by Docomo as Being Among VoIP Apps Putting Strain on its Network 1/30
• Line Hits 15 Million Downloads 1/27

insing.clozette.co

Singapore-based online fashion network Clozette is not wasting any time getting things rolling in 2013, today announcing a partnership with inSing, a subsidiary of SingTel Digital Media. According to the announcement, the first step in this partnership will see Clozette’s online shopping portal made available via inSing.com’s shopping channel.

In practice, this essentially means that Clozette (or more specifically a dedicated subdomain at insing.clozette.co) will be linked up from the inSing portal. In other words, navigating to inSing’s shopping menu will now display Clozette as an option for the site’s many visitors. For inSing which aspires to offer more locally-focused information, it’s a solid value add. And for Clozette, it could mean exposure to a wider local audience.

The CEO of SingTel Digital Media noted that the partnership would help “bring a varied selection of international brands to local fashionistas, extending [its] offering beyond food, movies, news, entertainment, and travel.”

If you browse inSing.com, you can also see that HungryGoWhere has prominent placement as well, with its many food recommendation options available as the very first menu item. Readers may recall that SingTel acquired HungryGoWhere in May of last year [1] for S$12 million (or US$9.4 million).

Clozette has previously partnered with Indonesia’s Female Daily Network in a similar tie-up, as well as Glam Media Japan before that. The company raised $1.9 million in series A funding back in May, raising the total amount that it has raised to about $3.06 million.

Photo from Appbank.net

While Christmas has come and gone for most of us, here in Japan there was quite a bit of excitement this morning as Apple held its annual ‘Lucky Bag’ sale at seven retail stores around the country. These lucky bag sales are a New Year’s tradition here in Japan, although few generate the excitement of Apple’s sale. Some bloggers have already posted pictures of their loot from this morning, so I thought we might take a look.

Over on the Japanese Apple blog AppBank, @Kazuend describes that in order to secure a place in line, he lined up at 6pm yesterday and was still 50th from the front. It’s a long wait in pretty cold weather, and there’s really no guarantee that you’re going to like the items that come in your lucky bag, which is priced at 33,000 yen ($380). But @Kazuend was apparently one of the lucky ones, as he figures his haul is worth about 95,000 yen (almost $1,100). Here’s what he got:

• Range Messenger bag, about $90
• iPad, 16GB wi-fi model, about $450 [1]
• Beats Solo HD headphones, about $230
• Apple New Year’s T-shirt, price unknown
• Logicool Keyboard cover for iPad, about $115
• Carbon Audio Zooka wireless speaker bar, about $92
• Lightning USB camera adaptor, about $33
• Mophie Juice Pack, about $80

Photo from Appbank.net

There are some other folks who were even luckier, coming away with a Macbook Air, which appears to be the best possible prize in this year’s bags. There’s a handy roundup of a many people’s lucky bags here in Japanese if you’d like to explore the phenomenon a little deeper. Looking at the contents, it’s hard not to be tempted to go line up next year.

I’m curious to hear if any of our readers braved the elements to sit in the cold for a lucky bag this year. If so, let us know in the comments.

One of my favorite games for all of 2012 was the endlessly wacky Battle Cats from Japanese game developer Ponos. I’ve been enjoying it on iOS ever since it was released back in November. But I’m delighted to see today that over the weekend the title has now also been made available on Android.

As I noted previously, part of the fun of playing Battle Cats is experiencing the game’s crazy sense of humor, which is only made funnier by the strange translations. Bisexual hippos and raging elephants with porn collections are not quite the sort if enemies I would have expected to face in any game — but that’s what you get in Battle Cats.

The game is currently free on both platforms, and even though it doesn’t cost anything it’s a surprisingly deep game with new levels, new enemies, and new cat upgrades to keep things interesting. There are lots of in-game purchases available, although passing on them doesn’t restrict your playing experience.

I recently graduated to chapter three, where the reward for completing that round is an amazing ‘Bahamut Cat’ (see below) — which is no doubt inspired by the ever popular Cygames title Rage of Bahamut. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on that one.

I should disclaim that Battle Cats is neither extremely popular, nor does it appear to be doing very well on the app ranking charts. I’m just a big fan, and for Android users looking for a fun new game to kick off the new year, I can’t think of a better recommendation.

NotTV, at CEATEC Japan

This past July we wrote about Mmbi Inc’s NotTV mobile television service, which at that point had surpassed 100,000 subscribers after its April launch. There’s now word from Mmbi this week that the service has now broken the 400,000 subscriber milestone, as of December 22. NotTV needed just 266 days to reach this landmark.

It’s important to understand that each of those subscribers is a paying customer, as the mobile channel costs 420 yen (almost $5) each month. If we do some quick math we can see that means nearly a cool $2 million monthly.

Currently the service is available in 14 Japanese prefectures, but it is expected that service will expand to all prefectures in 2013. Mmbi’s previously stated goal for its first year was one million subscribers, and with a little luck it could very well reach that mark if growth keeps up in the new year.

NotTV will launch a new promotional effort from tomorrow until January 6, as part of a New Year’s campaign. If that goes well, it could certainly help bring in some new subscribers.

NotTV is supported by Docomo, as most of its winter lineup of handsets are compatible with the service. So Mmbi could see another surge in sign-ups when the carrier’s spring lineup hits shelves next year too.

[NotTV via S-Max]

I’ve been having lots of fun trying out mobile games from the card battle genre over the past year. So far, my favorites have probably been the very popular Rage of Bahamut from Cygames and the recently released NFL Shuffle from GREE. But the latter company, GREE, has released a new social card battle game that I’m excited to try: Grand Sumo Card Battle. It’s currently available on feature phones, with pre-registration available for smartphone users [1].

The game will be free to play, and since it is created in cooperation with the Japan Sumo Association, featured wrestlers will include the two current Yokozuna, Hakuho and Harumafuji, as well as retired stars like Chiyonofuji. The association previously announced the game back in September, so its good to see it finally released, even if it’s just on feature phones for now [2]. Gameplay will take players on a tour though Japan, where they can develop and train wrestlers as they face their competition.

As someone who has gradually become a fan of sumo during my time here in Japan, I hope that this game can see some success. The sport of sumo is not so popular among young people these days, so perhaps if the JSA threw some support behind a game like this, perhaps they could reach some younger fans.

It would also be nice to see an English/global version of this sumo card battle game, although given that the sport isn’t that popular outside Japan’s borders, I can’t see that happening. But nevertheless, it is cool to see a title like this.

On a somewhat related note, you can expect sumo wrestlers to be invading Google Street View very soon as well, as they posed for Google’s tricycle mounted camera recently on Christmas Day. [Via Gamebiz.jp]

As the new year is almost upon us, most of us are likely pondering some resolutions for 2013. For those of you looking to quit smoking this year, there’s a new application from Singapore-based Bitsmedia which could help you meet that challenge.

Its new app Quit Pro takes an analytical approach to kicking your habit, by recording not only when you smoke, but also where you smoked, as well as the feelings or events that brought on the craving (see screenshots below). There are options for quitting gradually, as well as cold turkey [1], so you can customize it to whichever looks achievable for you.

You can also track the length of time that you have managed to stay quit, and also the amount of money you’ve saved, and how it has affected your life expectancy. There’s an aspect of encouragement too, as the app comes with 200 motivational quotes from different health organizations.

I’m a big fan of these life-quantifying apps [2], and Quit Pro comes with some fun graphical features that help you track your habit.

Some of you may remember Bitsmedia as the same app developer behind the very popular Muslim Pro app, which we mentioned a few times last year. After a brief stint at Google, founder Erwan Macé has decided to refocus on his app development. Muslim Pro has over three million downloads on iOS and Android to date, and he says it is generating “decent revenues.” He says that his approach to development is very lean, as it’s mostly himself working as a one-man indie developer with some help from freelancers on occasion.

Erwan notes that he quit smoking 10 years ago using a similar Symbian application, and he thought that the same process could work for others. But with new tracking features, he says that Quit Pro is something entirely new.

Like Muslim Pro, Quit Pro is a freemium app that offers some additional content if you choose to upgrade. Admirably, Erwan is putting five percent back towards cancer research, and so if you’re looking for a reason to choose this over other smoking apps, I think that’s as good a reason as any. You can get it for free over on the app store.

In addition to whatever fun presents Santa brought you this year, there are more than a few mobile app goodies to be had this season as well. There’s Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas app which gives you a freebie each day during the holidays [1]. But one of my favorite app giveaways so far this Christmas has been Fotomecha, a very handy photo application from Japan.

Previously priced at $1.99, Fotomecha has been made available for free from December 20th to 28th. And while Camera+ has been my photo app of choice for iOS, a few more days with Fotomecha might change that. The app has seven different lens modes, including a handy vertical 4-shot rapid-fire function (pictured below) which works great for moving subjects. I did find, however, that the 6- and 9-shot functions crashed the application, although to be honest I don’t ever expect to want to take anything more than a 4-shot.

You can even make animated gifs as well, which can then be uploaded to TwitPic or sent via email. I didn’t run into any problems with that function, and managed to create a simple animated gif just fine.

I don’t mess about with photo filters too much, but the Black & White, Cyano and Russian Blue filters that come with Fotomecha look really nice. There’s an option for vignetting to be turned on or off, focus and flash options, and a zoom of up to 4x.

The app has been around for quite a while now, but thanks to this recent price cut, it is now sitting pretty in second in the ‘photo and video’ category over on the Japanese App Store. For anyone with kids or pets, I definitely recommend picking this up and giving it a try. You can download it here.

NHN Japan’s animated rendition of Gangnam Style

Korean pop star PSY, who recently hit a billion views on YouTube, is being featured by Japanese chat application ‘Line’ in a fun promotional video. The clip only runs for about a minute in length, but it’s really well done, and features all Line characters that you’re likely familiar with if you use the up-and-coming application. Check it out below:

While PSY long-surpassed the status of global phenomenon, NHN Japan’s Line application has been a phenomenon in its own right in Japan and around Asia — but clearly its intention is to become something bigger. It has about 89 million users right now, and is pushing pretty hard to grab more. Hooking its wagon to PSY’s infectious Gangnam Style is certainly not a bad idea [1].

Meanwhile in Taiwan, the company has gone so far as to advertise on a local train. And by that, I mean that NHN has literally plastered an entire train green and covered it with Line characters (pictured below). On the inside of the train, passengers can use their smartphones to scan QR codes and read/receive events from the application.

Meanwhile, More Games

NHN Japan has also continued to roll out more games via its chat platform, with three new titles including the new Line Bubble (iOS/Android). That title is currently ranked as the number one free iOS app here in Japan, and on Google Play, it’s ranked fourth. The games are all casual titles like previously released Line games, and all will likely do very well thanks to quick and easy distribution via the Line chat application.

[NHN Japan via Techwave]

Payroll Hero team on its team retreat

If you attended our Startup Asia Jakarta event this past year, you no doubt remember Philippines-based startup Payroll Hero which was the runner-up for our Startup Arena competition. Today we received an update from co-founder Stephen Jagger who tells us that the company is ending 2013 on a high note, having been selected as ‘IT Startup of the Year’ in the Philippines.

Payroll Hero offers a unique service that helps companies keep track of employees using biometric facial recognition to ensure workers are at work when they should be. As we heard in their pitch earlier this year (see video), this solution targets time wasters and buddy punchers, and “optimizes work productivity with happiness.”

Payroll Hero

Stephen tells us this evening that Payroll Hero is still chugging along, and is looking forward to an even better year in 2013. So be sure to keep tabs on them (on Twitter, Facebook) to see what they have in store.

The award was handed out by the IT Journalists Association of the Philippines (also known as Cyberpress) [1]. The evening also saw Samsung Philippines selected as company of the year, and Project Noah – a data-rich weather mapping site that we mentioned during the August floods – was chosen as product of the year.

While it’s still Christmas Day in the Western hemisphere, those of us here in Asia are waking up on Boxing Day right now, and that likely means that we’re also seeing the first post-Christmas online sales. Here in Japan, I’m also seeing a promotion for my favorite holiday sales event, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) one-day ‘Lucky Bag’ sale, which has just been confirmed for January 2nd and will take place in seven stores nation wide.

If you’re not familiar with this sale, it’s essentially a very expensive grab bag of goodies from the Apple store, priced at 33,000 yen (or about $390). It usually includes things things like iPods, headphones, and accessories, but sometimes lucky shoppers will hit the big time and get a Macbook or an iPad, which pushes the value way past the price of the bag. Last year there were also Apple T-shirts, and even the bag itself looks sort of cool. I predict more than a few customers will see iPad Minis this year too.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to get in line very early if want one of these Lucky Bags. People typically begin lining up at the Apple store on the night before, so if you show up in the morning, and still manage to secure a bag — well, consider yourself lucky. I tried a couple of years ago, but walked away disappointed.

Now, if you’re not in Japan, you can expect Apple to soon announce some sales where you are too. Fans in China especially can look forward to an announcement soon, as the dragon graphic [1] for the Japan sale (pictured above) looks like it was designed with China in mind. Last year we saw Apple promote new years sales all across Asia on a Friday, so I expect we’ll see something similar this year, perhaps for next Friday, January 4. Stay tuned!

Mac fans camped out for the last Lucky Bag sale, with this lineup extending up the hill from the Apple Store in Shibuya, Tokyo. (Photo AppBank.net)

Readers may recall back in October when we featured new media artist Eric Siu and his amazing human camera prototype called ‘Touchy’. The concept involves Eric wearing a helmet-like camera, but with eye-holes that function as shutters which activate when he’s touched.

Eric, along with his partner Asia Skubisz and some other friends, have put together a fun Christmas video that I thought would be nice to share with you guys as the holidays are upon us.

It comes complete with all the things that make Christmas merry, including blond pole-dancers and homoerotic elves. Wait, did I say Christmas? I totally meant bachelor parties. In any case, you can check out the festive video in its entirety below. There’s a special guest appearance from Touchy advisor and Japanese gadget Nobumichi Tosa (Maywa Denki), who chimes in on his Otamatone, a very unique instrument of his own creation.

Stay tuned for more fun adventures from the very creative Touchy and friends in the new year!

Japanese mobile gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has quietly pushed out an NFL-branded card battle game for iOS late last week called NFL Shuffle. This comes on the heels of a similar MLB title which came out this past October, and has fared ok in the ‘sports’ and ‘role playing’ categories.

Speaking as a big fan of NFL football and as someone who is warming up to the card battle genre, this was a game I was excited to try out. You start out by picking your offensive and defensive captains for your team. From there you take them into battle in either season or versus mode. In games, the value of your card in comparison to your opponent’s determines your chances of moving forward from the line of scrimmage. If your opponent has a higher value card on his defensive squad, you’ll want to use one of your limited ‘swaps’ or ‘shuffles,’ or else you run the risk of a fumble or interception.

You have four downs to go the length of the field, and if you don’t score, the ball is turned over to the other team. There are no kickers or punters in the game, so you’re limited to quarterbacks, running backs, and tight ends on offense. In order to build a better team, you can collect new cards and evolve them via the mentoring feature. Although for me, I found that this card evolve function just stopped working after I reached around level 10. Hopefully that can be fixed in an upcoming release. Update: It appears to be working fine now. But there are still some bugs with some of the goals you’re required to complete.

Users can also collect gold as the seasons go on, giving them the ability to buy premium cards. In my own game so far, premium cards have been Darrelle Revis, Andre Johnson, and Donald Brown [1]. If the evolution function hadn’t broke, I might have really enjoyed merging my crappy cards to boost them even further.

Overall it looks like a really promising game. And assuming that the early bugs get fixed, I think it could be one my favorite GREE games to date. But it remains to be seen if it’s something that most NFL fans would go for.

I do recommend that football fans out there give it a try and let us know what you think [2]. It can be downloaded now from the US app store.

Image: Learni.st

One of the bigger technology stories of the past year has been the emergence of MOOCs, or massive open online courses. Platforms like Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy offer courses on a wide range of topics and can be accessed from anywhere on the planet with a decent internet connection. They are the logical evolution of the correspondence course realized thanks to the internet.

I won’t be so dramatic as Clay Shirky to say that MOOCs are going to turn institutional education on its head. I think he’s creating a false dichotomy by discussing them in this way. The truth is that many educational institutions are playing a big part in the growth of MOOCs. If I draw on my own recent experience with MOOCs, I’ve been in a Python course with Rice University professors on Coursera, and I did another on data visualization from the Knight Center for Journalism through UofT. Many of these courses bring much of the same information, and indeed the same instructors that you’ll find in universities.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that MOOCs are no replacement for in-class instruction. Posting a cry for help in a forum is hardly the same as raising your hand to ask a question. But MOOCs really don’t have to replace conventional education. They can be a supplement. Or, if you’re like me, a way for old (long-since graduated) dogs to learn new tricks. Or — and perhaps this is where the real impact lies — for a kid growing up in rural India or China, it can be a door to new worlds that’s suddenly as close as the nearest internet cafe.

For our readers who live in the world of startups, MOOCs have a lot to offer as well. The rich offerings of technical courses mean that suddenly your non-technical people can get become familiar with programming — not because you need those people to program themselves, but because it will help them see new possibilities, and thus work better with coders.

I’m curious to know how many of our readers have been taking advantage of MOOCs this year. If you have, do let us know what your experience has been like in the comments.

GREE (TYO:3632) and Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) have announced today that the companies will co-sponsor Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic bid. Beginning on December 26, both companies will roll out advertising in newspapers, public transport, and on the streets.

GREE and Yahoo Japan have helped to set up a website (ko-yaku2020.jp) where the public can pledge their support for the 2020 Olympic bid, along with celebrities and sports figures who have already done so. In a somewhat humorous way, you can write down what you promise to do if Tokyo is successful in its bid. As you can see below, GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka has pledged to make Tokyo a little greener by planting 2,020 plants in the city.

I really like that both these companies are throwing their support behind the Olympic bid. Although I can’t help but observe that this further illustrates the divergent strategies of GREE and its rival DeNA. GREE has been very aggressive in its marketing over the past year or so, with a huge presence at the Tokyo Game Show and E3, while DeNA took a pass. The company had billboards in San Francisco and ads in airports around the world.

But despite all this, it appears that DeNA has had the better year, both in terms of revenue and in terms of mindshare among gamers with its hit card battle title Rage of Bahamut, which we learned today has surpassed 10 million users.

Japanese gaming publisher Cygames has announced that its hit mobile social game Rage of Bahamut has surpassed the milestone of 10 million registered users worldwide. This title has been the biggest success abroad for any Japanese mobile gaming company this year, and for DeNA (TYO:2432), who operates the Mobage platform, it has been the highlight in its attempt to spread the Mobage platform beyond Japan.

Rage of Bahamut has been especially dominant on the Android platform this year, spending 28 consecutive weeks on top of the US top grossing charts. It’s Korean launch has also met with success, as the game was quick to reach the one million user mark in that country just a few weeks ago.

Rage also launched in China this year but so far we have yet to hear of any notable milestones on that front, and I don’t expect that we will any time soon. To date, the title is ranked 181st in China’s iOS store, and it’s not doing any better in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macau.

As we saw back in November, DeNA clearly has a lot of confidence in its partner publishers Cygames, as it took a 20 percent stake in the company, to the tune of $92 million.

If you haven’t yet tried out Rage of Bahamut, do give it a go. The card battle genre is an interesting one that might catch on further in 2013. Cygames and DeNA have also partnered on Marvel War of Heroes, a title which I’ve been enjoying a lot over the past week or so. Any fan of comics will appreciate all the familiar Marvel characters, while at the same time experiencing the same sort of card battle gaming elements which have made Rage of Bahamut such a runaway success.

[Via Gamebiz.jp]

Recently we’ve written much about the success of NHN Japan’s Line, both in its home market and abroad. The chat platformed has been used very effectively to distribute the company’s apps, its games in particular. In response, Japanese mobile gaming leaders DeNA and GREE have published their own chat apps (Comm and GREE Messenger), and no doubt plan to distribute games in this way as well.

But there’s a new player in town as well, as Korea’s Kakao has been trying extra hard in Japan, particularly in the past week or so. While the company has offered its app in the country for some time now, consumers are finally seeing KakaoTalk making a strong push in the last ten days or so with a television ad blitz.

The commercials feature model/entertainer Anna Tsuchiya, who demonstrates some of the more appealing features of the app. As you can see in the videos below, the group chat feature – which can be used by up to five people – is their big focus, as is the fact that all stamps/stickers are free [1]. As with many commercials in Japan, they’re a little strange, but pretty funny all the same.

The ad blitz seems to have worked too, as KakaoTalk broke into the top ten free iOS apps in Japan last week, peaking at number five on Thursday. In the social networking category for Japan, it’s currently ranked fourth.

So far KakaoTalk has about 7.5 million users in Japan, in comparison with Line, which has about 37 million users domestically. Back in October, Yahoo Japan acquired a 50 percent stake in the KakaoJapan subsidiary, and that should significantly help its push in the country.

Samsung Galaxy S3, Docomo’s Tokyo launch

According to forecasted numbers from analysts at iSuppli, 2012 will see Korean manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS) took the lead in the mobile manufacturing race. Preliminary figures for 2012 global shipments put Samsung as the top OEM, displacing Nokia which previously held that position for 14 years.

Samsung is expected to account for 29 percent of the mobile market in 2012, which is up from 24 percent in the previous year (see chart below). Nokia, on the other hand, drops to an expected 24 percent from 30 percent last year. Wayne Lam, senior analyst at iSuppli, elaborated on this changing of the guard in the mobile space:

Samsung’s successes and Nokia’s struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies’ divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector.

According to preliminary figures from iSuppli

How will Apple fare? The Cupertino company is forecasted to be a distant third, accounting for 10 percent of all global shipments. ZTE and LG round out the top five with six percent and four percent respectively.

If we drill down to the smartphone space, which iSuppli says has grown by 35.5 percent this year, you’ll see exactly where Nokia has failed. Where the company accounted for 16 percent of all smartphones in 2011, it will only account for five percent this year. Samsung, in contrast, will jump from 20 percent market share of smartphones to 28 percent in 2012. Its success this year has been largely due to its flagship Galaxy S3, which Samsung announced in November had surpassed 30 million units sold.

As for Apple’s smartphone shipments, those will stay about the same, up one percent in 2012 to 20 percent.

The folks over on Techwave are pointing out this morning that Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has now joined the mobile chat application frenzy that has been so popular in Asia this year. It’s new GREE Messenger application now joins the likes of domestic rivals Comm (from DeNA) and Line from NHN Japan, not to mention Korea’s KakaoTalk and China’s WeChat.

All of these apps have aspirations for the global market, and and GREE Messenger looks to be no exception, as the company has quietly released it in just a few regional app stores as far as I can see. Currently the iOS app is available in the Australia, New Zealand, and India app stores, so if you’re in one of those locations, you can take it for a spin. It’s available for Android, but with some apparent geographical restrictions as well [1].

While I haven’t tested it out yet due to geographical restrictions, the chat app looks very much like others in the category, with the same sort of cute cartoon stickers that we have seen from Line and Comm. It can import contacts from your phone book or from Facebook, and it also has group chats as well. The app is free if you’d like to check it out, but you will need a phone number to register.

Given the success that Line and KakaoTalk have seen with distributing their games via their chat messengers, both GREE Messenger and Comm are efforts from Japan’s gaming giants to not get left behind. Although neither company has said so yet, I think we can look forward to seeing both GREE and DeNA bring games into their messengers in 2013.

Image: Looops, freshtrax

The folks over at Looops Communications recently put together a good overview of some of the major social platforms in Japan [1]. And there’s a helpful translation here from freshtrax if you’d like to read it in full. It includes social gaming platforms, so there is an element of comparing apples and oranges here – but I think it’s informative, and worth sharing here.

When comparing the revenue of GREE, DeNA’s Mobage, CyberAgent’s Ameba, and Mixi, perhaps the most notable trend is the recent plunge that GREE (in blue, above) is experiencing. We touched on this back in November, citing a company representative who thinks the company is already seeing a recovery trend. Looops cites GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka as saying that issues like Kompu Gatcha were a setback, and this of course, affected DeNA and other game companies too.

At GREE booth, Tokyo Game Show 2012

As social games expert Serkan Toto pointed out today, both DeNA and GREE – even with recent setbacks – are putting western counterparts like Zynga to shame when it comes to revenue, profit, and market cap.

The Looops article (and freshtrax translation) has a little more to say on CyberAgent and Mixi too, but I was particularly struck by the above chart which shows exactly how far ahead GREE and DeNA are from their nearest social rivals in Japan.

I should note that NHN’s Line could perhaps be included as one of the social ‘big boys’ in Japan now as well, and it would certainly be interesting to see where its revenue lies these days too. CyberAgent is one to watch as well, as it has dropped some significant ad money on promoting Ameba smartphone services recently on television. And as we have seen in the past in Japan (GREE, DeNA’s Mobage and Comm, Line), TV ad spots can often be a catalyst for a spike in user adoption and public mindshare.