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!

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.

There have been lots of great applications to emerge from Japan over the past year. And while I can’t claim to have that many of them, I have tried quite a few. I thought I’d share five of my favorites for iOS [1], though I’d be very curious to hear which ones you liked as well. Of course, I won’t go so far as to say these are the best, but I certainly got lots of use and enjoyment from them in the past year.

5. Ninja Farm

I’m really not sure why I enjoyed this game so much. I usually despise farming games. But like most people, I do have a soft spot for ninjas ever since Shinobi on the Sega Master System. The idea of planting and harvesting ninjas is a thoroughly ridiculous idea, but somehow the process of leveling up your army and taking them into battle against increasingly difficult enemies made for a game that I didn’t want to stop playing (see my original article here).

The title was made by the CyberAgent’s Gamewave, and if you’d like to check it out, you can find it in the app store.

4. Line Camera

I confess, this isn’t an application that I use a lot, but I am impressed with the photo decoration functions – perhaps more than any other ‘photo-deco’ app I’ve seen to date. Line Camera got off to a scorching start this past summer, as NHN Japan boasted that it reached the 10 million user mark three times faster than Instagram did. It now claims over 17 million users in 210 countries around the world.

In retrospect, looking at the success of the other apps that NHN Japan has distributed via its chat platform, that’s probably not entirely due to the merits of the app alone. But I still think it’s pretty sharp. Check it out over on the app store.

As with many other successful applications, Line Camera has seen imitators spring up as well, most notably (and perhaps shamefully) this crappy Chinese rip-off which has since been renamed.

3. Rage of Bahamut

Perhaps the most successful app or game to come out of Japan in the past year is Cygame’s Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage platform. The card battle title has enjoyed huge popularity not just at home but abroad as well, proving that there is some potential for card battle games outside Japan. The game has ranked high on top grossing charts (particularly on Android) and DeNA recently bought a 20 percent stake in Cygames, showing just how much confidence it has in the game publisher.

If you haven’t yet tried it, check it out now on the app store. It’s also available on Google Play for those of you rocking Android.

2. Zaim

This personal finance app is still in the growing stages, but it’s still one of the few apps that I use on a daily basis (see my previous article on Zaim here). You can input your expenses in your preferred currency and according to a range of categories, and pace yourself according to a pre-set monthly budget in each category. Zaim recently pushed its version 2.0 which added support for different types of payment like wallet, credit card, or Pasmo card.

Ideally I’d like to see some sort of data export function in the future for Zaim, although now that I think about it, that sort of thing might be a possibility for a premium version in the future.

Readers may recall that Cookpad recently invested in Zaim to the tune of $512,000, and web and PC versions of Zaim are on the way. You can get Zaim from the app store and give it a try.

1. Battle Cats

I discovered this game just a month back, but I haven’t really put it down for very long since then. It’s a fun tower defense game which pits you and an army of cats against an assortment of enemies. One of the coolest things about Battle Cats is its sense of humor, which rather than getting lost in translation, is actually enhanced in an All-your-base manner, as you can see below from the enemy descriptions. Overall, this game hasn’t been very popular, but I still enjoy the hell out of it, and it’s always making me laugh.

I tried to reach the game’s developer Ponos, in the hopes of interviewing someone at company about Battle Cats – but regretably, they appear less adept at marketing than game development.

If you’d like to try it out, you can get it over in the app store for iPhone or iPad.

VS Media points out a CyberAgent (TYO:4751) announcement stating that the company will be closing the English version of its Ameba Pigg virtual world, Pico World. A brief note on its blog last week explained that the service, which was initially released in English in 2010, will be closed on December 17.

There isn’t much of an explanation for the closure, merely a statement that the company ‘cannot continue to provide updates due to limited developer resources.’ Pico World is also available on Facebook, so ostensibly this announcement would apply to that service as well, although CyberAgent didn’t mention it specifically.

So does anyone care that Pico World is closing? Apparently there are a few, as some users are petitioning CyberAgent America to save Pico World.

To my knowledge, CyberAgent hasn’t commented on its related efforts in China, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Xiaorenguo on Kaixin001 and Sina Weibo be soon shuttered as well. We have inquired with CyberAgent to find out more. Update: These services have been shut down as well.

Disregarding its overseas adventures, CyberAgent’s overall Ameba efforts for mobile are currently transitioning from feature phones to smartphones. The company said in its recent financial report that it not doing additional development for Ameba on PCs, and feature phone development has practically stopped.

The company plans to strengthen Ameba for smartphones, with the social community service feeding users into its social games. So I suppose its possible that the company could try again with Ameba Pigg in English in the smartphones space once it establishes firm footing in that area. [Source: CyberAgent via VS Media]

On day one of our Startup Asia Jakarta conference, we’re fortunate to have a power-packed lineup of international investors on board with us, discussing the potential they see in the country as investors seeking opportunities there:

Tatsuo Tsutsumi, GREE Ventures

Tatsuo Tsutsumi is a partner at GREE Ventures and has over 14 years of experience in managing and investing in internet companies. He worked for the Management Consulting Division of Sanwa Research Institute Corporation where he was involved in strategic development and implementation support of mid-sized Japanese businesses.

After Sanwa Research Institute Corporation, he joined Global Brain Corporation which is an independent venture capital in Japan. After Global Brain, he joined Cyber Agent which is major internet company in Japan, and launched many internet services and Venture Capital arms of Cyber Agent (Cyber Agent Ventures).

After Cyber Agent, he joined RECRUIT which is the largest information service provider in Japan. He developed some new business and manage Venture Capital arms of RECRUIT (Recruit Incubation Partners) and invested in 15 startups. He received a BA in Law from Keio University in Japan (BA in Philosophy) and MA from the Keio Graduate School.

Alexander Pavlov, Ru-Net

Alexander Pavlov is an investment director for ru-Net, a leading Internet and IT investment company with about 30 investments in a portfolio of $700 million across Russia, Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. ru-Net’s portfolio includes some exciting internet and IT companies such as Yandex, Russia’s number 1 search company (symbol YNDX on NASDAQ), where ru-Net was the first investor. It also has the $100 million US arm (RTP Ventures) that was started last year and closed five deals so far in US focusing on both technology companies (SaaS, big data, parallel computing, security) as well as consumer Internet companies.

In Europe, ru-Net has a number of investments in exiting companies like Tradeshift, Delivery Hero, and made.com. Alexander joined ruNet in 2008 and since then was a part of over 15 deals. His responsibilities include finding and managing portfolio companies in Russia with key focus on e-commerce, travel, and B2C. He is also in-charge of ru-Net’s activity in SEA. In 2012, ru-Net plans to actively invest in Southeast Asia, especially in the e-commerce, gaming, travel, and online entertainment sectors.

Takeshi Ebihara, Batavia Ventures

Takeshi Ebihara is the CEO of Rebright Partners with more than 15 years experience in Venture Capital funding, as well as internet industry corporate management. He has long experience investing in tech startup with some of them going on IPO.

Ebihara has also founded several startups himself and also has experience managing a public company as CEO in Japan. Batavia Incubator, an Indonesian focused venture fund is a joint venture between Rebright Partners, Japanese incubator and Corfina Group, Indonesian Financial Group.

Takahiro Suzuki, Cyberagent Ventures

After joining CyberAgent Inc. Suzuki was part of CyberBuzz Inc. where he helped the company established its media division and online ad sales. After that, he joined another startup, CyberX Inc., which develops mobile social apps and games. At CyberX, Suzuki worked as a manager and was one of key members who contributed greatly to the startup’s route to profitability.

His role at CyberX earned him the MVP award. In June 2011, he officially became a venture capitalist after joining CyberAgent Ventures. In October 2011, he led CyberAgent Ventures into Indonesia. He now resides in Jakarta and can converse fairly well in Bahasa Indonesia.

We’re asking all these investors to share the difficulties they have faced thus far, ranging from the perks of early investments, to their long term investment plans in Indonesia. Whilst all these international investors ready to put their money in the pockets of Indonesian entrepreneurs, are they entirely ready for investments yet?

Of course, for Indonesian entrepreneurs looking to expand out of our own comfort zone, you must be curious about how these international investors can help. This and a whole lot more will be discussed during our Startup Asia session “Discussion: Inside the Minds of Overseas Investors” segment on day one at noon June 7, from 12.10 pm to 12.50 pm.

Also, if you haven’t gotten your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta yet, you can get one here. And if you have a winning startup idea that could wow the audience and judges at Startup Arena, submit it here. See you guys!

pictured: Kompu gacha explained in TV report

The Japanese mobile social gaming space has experienced quite a rollercoaster ride over the past week or so. It was one week ago today that GREE (TYO:3632) acquired game developer Funzio for the astounding sum of $210 million dollars. Its rival DeNA (TYO:2432 ) was ostensibly also feeling pretty comfortable in its fancy new digs with a top grossing Android title under its belt in Rage of Bahamut [1].

And then the proverbial poop hit the fan this week when a weekend report about a practice called ‘Kompu Gacha’ (which is used in GREE and Mobage games as well as those of other companies) indicated that Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency saw it as a violation of law [2]. Kompu Gacha encourages players to buy a series of items, promising the possibility of later winning a very rare prize.

On Monday in the wake of this report, the stock of GREE, DeNA and many other companies (including Konami, CyberAgent, and Bandai Namco) took a collective nose dive to the tune of $3.8 billion in market cap. Serkan Toto, as usual, is providing great commentary on this space, noting yesterday that GREE and DeNA stabilized yesterday, only to dip again today, GREE taking the worst of it, dropping 9.64 percent.

In the middle of all this, both GREE and DeNA have released their their financials for the third quarter over the past two days, showing that the two gaming giants are – if nothing else – making crazy amounts of money. DeNA’s quarterly net sales totaled $529 million (up 32 percent on the same time in the previous year) while GREE’s net sales were $580 million (up 182 percent from a year before) [3].

So what about Kompu Gacha? Both companies are reportedly going to back away from the practice. DeNA’s president noted in an earnings briefing that the company is to gradually phase out Kompu Gacha from Mobage Games. When we got in contact with DeNA directly this evening, a representative essentially pointed out that its business is far from a one-trick pony:

Social games are not finished products but services. So even if we are to phase out complete gacha, we can implement many other types of in-game events and game mechanics, and we have the know-how.

Late this evening, DeNA also released a note on its website saying that the consortium including itself and GREE, as well as NHN, CyberAgent, Dwango, and Mixi have all agreed to phase out Kompu Gacha by the end of the month in titles they develop and operate.

Personally, I can’t help but wonder if the Kompu Gacha mechanism is such a lucrative practice, will we see it turn up in many games outside of Japan? And will other countries struggle to regulate it as well?

For us here on the sidelines, it’s certainly more than a little confusing to watch this drama play out. Both GREE and DeNA are in the process of expanding their businesses abroad, and it will be interesting to see if they can translate their respective successes, or if either over-extends their capabilities.

[Image: matome.naver.jp/odai]

Japanese online entertainment company CyberAgent (TYO:4751) has announced today that it has made Facematch Inc. a subsidiary, and that the service will be renamed – effective today – to be called Pitapat Inc.

The service has been around for some time now, and it helps users find people they like or think are cute on Facebook, and if that person likes them back, it will let them know. In order to do this, you will pick people you like from your own circle of friends, from friends of friends, or from events you attend, and assign a rating of ‘bright,’ ‘hopeful,’ or ‘dim’ [1] according to your feeling. ‘Bright’ and ‘Hopeful’ individuals will be added to your ‘albums’ area.

At that point, that selected person will get a notification that says something like “someone here is interested in you.” If both people like each other, then there will be a matching notification, but the person’s identity is still not revealed. Messages can be exchanged anonymously, and after five messages each have been exchanged, identities will be disclosed.

The creators of the service are university students [2] who decided to turn their idea into a company. It’s available for iOS and for PC as well (though currently the download link for the latter doesn’t work for me). There’s also an Android version coming up in July.

In any case, it’s a very clever idea — although I confess it took a while for me to grasp exactly how it works. I’m not sure if this will hinder user adoption, but I hope all goes well for the folks at Pitapat.

According to Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432) and Cygames [1] have announced that the social card battle game Rage of Bahamut for Android smartphones hit number one on Google Play’s top grossing chart in the US this week.

It’s interesting to see a game from the card battle genre find success like this overseas, as this type of game was perhaps only really proven in Japan so far. DeNA’s representative director and president, Isao Moriyasu, spoke on this point:

Rage of Bahamut demonstrates that Japanese developers’ expertise in social games can be applied effectively overseas … The success that the title has achieved also shows that a browser-based game can generate a remarkable average revenue per user in the West with the right game design and the savvy in introducing apps to the marketplace.

Rage of Bahamut currently sits in in the number two position on the top grossing list (behind Live Holdem Poker Pro), but it also ranked high in Sweden (second), Canada (sixth), and the Netherlands (seventh).

It’s billed as a fantasy adventure game where you collect and battle men, gods, and demons. Apparently it has been given a bit of a Western design twist, in comparison to the Japanese original. I confess I have yet to try out this game myself, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

DeNA onstage at Net Impact in Jakarta.

CyberAgent Ventures Indonesia held its Net Impact Conference less than a week ago in the Grand Hyatt hotel, Jakarta. It is CyberAgent Ventures’ initiative to help improve the local startup ecosystem and to share knowledge between successful foreign companies and Indonesian entrepreneurs.

Big names from Japan such as DeNA, GREE, and of course CyberAgent itself were present, while Vietnamese companies such as NCT, Teamobi, and VNG were also there – since CyberAgent Ventures has a big presence in that country. What was different about this event was that Tencent and Sina, two of China’s biggest social media companies, were speaking for the first time in Jakarta.

Some key takeaways:

DeNA has a $5 billion market this year which is very high growth. It took only four years to do that. Top 20 titles from Mobage, the DeNA platform, see $1 million per month in sales. The company aims to boost its platform by focusing on certain regions, like China. Yesterday it recruited Sina Weibo as a distribution and login partner on its Mobage platform.

GREE is pushing its Gree Global Platform (GGP), which is the culmination of last year’s OpenFeint acquisition. The new platform puts its social games, mobile social games, and social networking service on one platform across multiple devices. It has partners in China and Korea, as well as game developers like Ubisoft and Gameloft, to name just a few.

With 190 million users in more than 100 countries, GREE aims to formally launch the GGP in April or May of this year. The company also shared some know-how at the Jakarta event, such as how it bases every decision on raw data, and how it updates games every week (day or even night, since these are online games not console-based ones). It also aims to spread profitable game-building know-how over the years as it grows; it currently has 1,200 employees and more than 12,000 global developers.

Tencent is an all-round internet giant in China: it has news, email, a search engine, online games, QQ browser, and the QQ IM which is being used by 380 million folks across all major platforms. Tencent also has its eye on Indonesia with an aim to get people onto its Qute (a group messaging app for feature-phones that’s said to be better than WhatsApp or Blackberry Messenger), and also its QQ Browser for mobile.

Sina onstage at Net Impact in Jakarta. Click to enlarge.

Sina might have gotten lucky with its Weibo service, which started as a simple Twitter clone, but it’s definitely not just a regular clone. Grwoing to about 300 million registered users in just two years, it now encompasses online browser games, a virtual currency, online storage, brand pages, charity pages, online polling, and so much more. Sina representatives in Jakarta revealed they will have a $200 million developers fund, enhanced Weibo for enterprise, and a plan to build an online payment platform as well (as its virtual currency is now tied to third-party solutions).

Vietnam’s NCT shared about how it started as a music website and then evolved into a platform where you can find services like matchmaking, e-commerce, social networking, or even online payment. VNG is also doing what all the major social games companies are doing – making itself into a social games platform.

Net Impact was definitely one of the best conferences in Jakarta yet (I’m stressing that last word), but it definitely was not perfect either. Most of the keynotes felt like they were hard sells for the company, whereas what I think we need is to learn how we, as Indonesian entrepreneurs, can take in their experience and build our own success stories. Still, props to the CyberAgent Ventures team for holding this Net Impact Conference.

Back in December of last year we predicted that social video apps would be big in China in 2012, led by a fun one called iSheHui (pictured above). And the Japanese investment firm CyberAgent Ventures seems to agree, having this week confirmed that it has invested 10 million RMB (US$1.59 million) in the startup that makes it.

iSheHui is sort of an Instagram for videos, allowing users to add funky filters to an iPhone or Android smartphone vid and then easily share it with friends on Weibo. The startups two founders, Li Zheng and Zhao Liang, have years of experience in China’s top video-streaming sites – Mr. Li at Ku6 (NASDAQ:KUTV), Mr. Zhao at Tudou (NASDAQ:TUDO) as its former CTO.

Li Zheng has told Chinese media that his startup quickly grew in just over two months to 500,000 users, and is now seeing 5,000 new smartphone-made videos being uploaded every day.

Cyberagent Ventures and its parent company, the web firm CyberAgent (TYO:4751), know a lot about mobile apps and they also help developers reach the lucrative Japanese market. It’s not clear if that’s part of the strategy with its investment in iSheHui.

We saw the same venture group splashing its cash just two weeks ago, but that time it was on a Vietnamese music service.

[Source: 36kr - article in Chinese]

We’ve written much about Japanese internet entertainment company CyberAgent (TYO:4751) over the past year, ranging from its many game offerings for smartphones and social platforms, to its ventures abroad setting up offices in Taiwan and Jakarta, to helping international smartphone developers make inroads in Japan.

The company recently announced its first quarter results, which saw net income up by nearly 40 percent. CyberAgent just published an online video presentation with slides about its first quarter, and I thought I’d share some highlights here.

One aspect of the CyberAgent’s business which we haven’t discussed much on here is Ameba, the company’s social networking service [1], which saw subscribers surpassed 20 million. The number of users on Ameba Pigg have passed the 10 million.

Looking at monthly page views for Ameba, you can see that its growth has been steady over the years, and indeed picked up some steam in 2011, with users beginning to access the services via smartphones.

While this chart indicates that such users aren’t really very significant right now, they represent the strongest potential for growth for CyberAgent, who expects page views from smartphones to rocket to 35 billion in 2013, up from 2.1 billion in September 2011 (see chart, lower right).

The company also noted that it plans to increase the number of full-time employees by 700 in 2012, more than half of which will be engineers, this on top of its current headcount of more than 2,000.

It will be interesting to watch and see CyberAgent continue to grow, both at home and abroad, over the course of 2012. For more information, I encourage you to check out the company’s full report.

Ninja Farm is CyberAgent’s (TYO:4751) latest Gamewave platform iPhone game, and it is pretty much the kind of game it sounds like. You farm ninjas, and then set off on missions against enemy armies. Each time you go into battle, you can take ten of your best ninjas with you, so it’s up to you to plow your fields and grow the best possible types of ninjas you can afford.

While the game uses a gold currency with which you can buy new ninjas to plant, you can also use real cash to buy in-game items and fancier, more powerful ninjas. Thankfully the game developers have marked off such paid items with a blue ‘buy’ icon as opposed to the regular ‘red’ buy icon. Gamers can get buy without buying real items, but you’re going to need some patience. Sometimes the game imposes a wait period before your next mission, and then you can use an ‘Instant Mission’ skip. If you can’t spend money, Ninja Farm will make you spend time instead.

Blue items are paid, red can be bought with virtual coins

Ninja Farm battle sequence

The clever device used here is that once you plant the advanced ninjas (i.e. the ones which take the most time to grow) you kinda want to wait around and take them for a spin. So in this way, Ninja Farm is a tricky game to put down. I didn’t take advantage of the social features of Ninja Farm, but according to Gamewave its platform lets you:

play games against friends (who can connect via Google, Facebook, Twitter or Mixi) and offers rewards, rankings, a virtual currency called Gamewave coins, etc.

Other Gamewave titles to date include Coin Pusher Mafia, Animal Bakery, and Zombie Restaurant.

Is Ninja Farm a cheap ‘ninjafied’ farming game? Perhaps. Is it awful? I don’t think so. The varying abilities of the ninjas kept me interested for a couple of hours. But the imposed waiting does get to you after you’ve used up all your ‘Instant Mission’ items. In any case, I’ll let you judge for yourself. Check it out on the iTunes store.

My Ninja Farm: Those green guys look like turtle ninja!

That's a double negative!

A couple of months back we told you about a camera app from Japan called My365, which at that time had attracted more than 100,000 downloads over a ten-day span. Since then it has racked up over 300,000 downloads, gaining popularity abroad as well as in Japan. As we mentioned that the time, the organization of this photo app into a well-designed calendar presentation really makes it stand out as a sort of photo journal service.

And today CyberAgent (TYO:4751) is announcing that it is establishing a new 100 percent consolidated company named Sirok Inc which will be running the My365 services as of January 20. The details of this situation seem a little bit complicated to us, but we’re told that Yuta Iizuka, who is scheduled to join CyberAgent in April, will be the company’s president.

The goals for Sirok are apparently pretty lofty too. A CyberAgent representative tells us that Sirok is hoping for 1 million downloads of My365 by March, and 1.5 million downloads by May. As for a business model (the app is currently available for free), we’re told that less-intrusive ads or fees for special functions (which have yet to be determined) could be in the works. The company will also be working on developing an Android version of My365.

You can learn more about the app over on my365.in, and iOS users can download it here.

Readers may recognize the iconic character from the Vocaloid voice synthesizing application and her subsequent cultural rise that has included virtual concerts around the world (see video below) as a high-tech stage projection.

Needless to say she has legions of fans both inside and outside of Japan, and CyberAgent America is hoping that Pico World users will want Hatsune Miku Vocaloid virtual goods, including the Hatsune Miku outfit and trademark turqoise pony-tails. The company’s executive vice-president elaborated:

With social game and virtual worlds booming worldwide, we feel Pico World is on the forefront of brining Japanese culture to other countries… This partnership with Crypton Future Media will allow us to bring the Character style, and more importantly Hatsune Miku brand to fans worldwide.

While I’m not sure whether spreading Japanese culture is a key business goal for CyberAgent, it’s certainly a wonderful by-product. I can’t help but draw comparisons with China, especially having read Will Moss’ excellent piece about China’s soft power, and how that nation still lacks such an iconic cultural export.

Here’s a live concert of Hatsune’s, so that you can see her in the flesh pixels:

Japanese interactive entertainment company CyberAgent has just announced that it will be providing marketing services for international corporations who are targeting the smartphone market in Japan. The company’s director, Takahito Naoti, explains:

By establishing the International Mobile Marketing Division we will look to further bolster smartphone advertising revenue in Japan and expand our client base by targeting overseas advertisers encouraged by the burgeoning growth of the Japanese smartphone market.

This new mobile marketing initiative will assist application producers and increase downloads in both the Japanese Apple AppStore and the Google Android Market. It will make use of its leading AMoAd smartphone ad network, its app recommendation service FreeAppNow, and its CPI based network CA Reward.

A CyberAgent representative tells Penn Olson this evening that the company “believe[s] that Japanese smartphone ad market is still strong, growing, and prominent.” Its announcement also cites Chetan Sharma Consulting saying that Japan has the world’s highest mobile ARPU (see chart below). So in that respect, the Asian nation will be an attractive market in that consumers are quite used to paying for mobile services. And as we noted back in June, the average price of iOS apps are higher in Japan than anywhere in the region.

You can read more about CyberAgent’s Mobile Marketing initiative over on its website.

Via Chetan Sharma

We’ve written much about CyberAgent recently, as it’s a prominent example of how many large Japanese previously insular internet companies are now looking abroad for new markets. Today we received word from the company that its subsidiary CyberAgent America is releasing ‘Coin Pusher Mafia’ for Apple’s iOS.

The president and CEO of CyberAgent America, Shinichi Saijo, remarked in the announcement:

“The release of ‘Coin Pusher Mafia’ on our ‘GAMEWAVE’ platform represents a major step forward in our aim to further the growth potential of our social gaming business in overseas markets.”

Gamewave is the mobile social gaming platform that allows CyberAgent to implement social features, rankings, and achievements in its smartphone games. This means that users can use Facebook Connect and Mixi Connect for Coin Pusher Mafia, and as we all know – for better or worse – mafia games on social networks is a proven model. No matter how annoying it might be…

Indeed CyberAgent claims that the game has a Mafia Wars theme, with users building their team in an effort to defeat bosses. It is a free download in the App Store , but according to Serkan Toto, who had an early jump on this yesterday, users can make in-app purchases “from $2.99 for 30 “Mafia Cash” to $49.99 for 550 Mafia Cash, to purchase special items, weapons etc.”

After experiencing some success abroad with Ameba Pico on the Facebook platform, we’ll have to wait and see if the company can find similar traction on iOS.

To read more details about Coin Pusher Mafia, check out CyberAgent’s release below.

CyberAgent Releases ‘Coin Pusher Mafia’ for iOS Platforms in Japan and the U.S.

This move signifies the group’s intentions to grow its portfolio further in Taiwan and in Greater China, which would add to the total of 18 companies it has invested in already in those regions. The company pointed to the importance of Taiwan in its statement:

Given the popularity of the Internet and the abundance of entrepreneurs in Taiwan, we consider Taiwan as a very attractive market, and will enhance our investment and incubation activities by establishing the new office in Taipei.

Speaking to a CyberAgent representative this morning, Penn-Olson learned that the company is also planning to set up an office in Jakarta, Indonesia this upcoming October. After its recent series B investment in Indonesian online mall Tokopedia, the company’s director of overseas investment noted the high potential of the market there.

These moves continue the recent trend of Japanese companies looking to expand abroad, and within the CyberAgent parent company which is currently having some success in the overseas market with its Facebook games.

Today the company announced a spin-off Facebook game of sorts called World Chef, which will allow users to play using their Ameba Pico avatar. The game is a culinary variant of Ameba Pico world, with the same look and feel, but this time challenging users to manage restaurants around the globe.

Susumu Fujita, the company’s president & CEO explained:

We plan to increase momentum regarding our global business ambitions, using the release of World Chef to firmly establish a foothold in overseas markets.

We’ve recently mentioned how Japanese gaming companies are seeking new audiences overseas, and CyberAgent is one of the pioneers in doing this. I was a little skeptical that many of its 3.5 million users would be from Japan, but a representative tells me today that Japanese users only account for one percent.

27 percent of the game’s users come from Indonesia, which – as we have pointed out many times before – is one of the biggest nations on Facebook. The Philippines and the United States are right behind though, with 24 and 19 percent respectively.

The phenomenon of Japanese companies seeking overseas markets is an fascinating one to watch. And even though I’m not personally a fan of these Facebook games (there are not even any weapons or explosions or anything!) it’s good to see CyberAgent finding some success in its early attempts.

Japanese investment firm, CyberAgent Ventures has recently invested $1 million in Taiwan’s iPeen for 20 percent stake, valuing iPeen at $5 million.

iPeen is one of the largest user generated restaurant review websites in Taiwan. The website has more than 85,000 restaurants listed on its website and attracts up to 200,000 visitors each day. iPeen recorded $1 million in revenue last year and plans to hit $3 million this year. Sky Ho, CEO of iPeen said that he targets an initial public offering (IPO) in five years time.

iPeen will use the investment to bring in more manpower to its current and new offices in Taichung and Kaohsiung. He also said that iPeen services would also be available in smartphones and tablets soon.

Without a doubt, Taiwan-based start-ups are on the rise. We recently covered EZTable (expanding to Singapore) and Ragic, which are some of the more promising start-ups from the country. I recently met up with several Taiwan-based venture capitalists (Jamie Lin from AppWorks and Volker Heistermann from Yushan Ventures ) at Beijing and they echoed the same thoughts. It is exciting time ahead for Taiwan.

I will also be attending a start-up event organized by AppWorks in May. Looking forward to it.

Via FocusTaiwan