Japan’s NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) is buddying up with another giant telco, China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941), to bring its mobile gaming portal to an overseas market for the first time ever. Starting from tomorrow, Docomo’s ‘D Game’ portal, which launched in Tokyo last fall, will launch within China Mobile’s own app store.

Dubbed the China Mobile Market, it’s one of China’s largest third-party app stores (see it here), focusing on Android and feature phone apps and games. The arrival of the D Game portal for China Mobile’s 700 million subscribers will be good news for Japanese developers who publish via Docomo’s platform. An initial 20 titles will launch tomorrow on D Game China [1], from studios like Capcom, Konami, and Square Enix. Its catalog will expand over time.

China Mobile’s app store does support paid apps – via carrier billing, of course – but it’s not clear if the D Game titles will be paid ones. Docomo’s announcement today points out its involvement with Dentsu and NTT Advertising in a Chinese joint-venture called D2C, so it’s likely that the games will monetize via in-game ads.

D Game is part of Docomo’s recent push into content and mobile commerce, along with companion services dubbed dmenu and dmarket [2]. The latter one got a big boost recently with Docomo’s acquisition of a women’s fashion e-commerce site.

China Mobile has just [over 100 million 3G subscribers](Dentsu and NTT Advertising in Japan. Dis), so it has a fairly large smartphone user-base, who are the ones most likely to be keen to snap up Android games.

Japanese ad agency Dentsu (TYO: 4324) and ADK Group have announced (pdf) that they have become business partners for Flipboard in Japan.

With this partnership, the companies will help Flipboard establish media partnerships, as well as market the social magazine app and promote it as an advertising medium.

And in today’s announcement, 30 media organizations were noted as exclusive content additions, including GQ Japan, TechCrunch Japan, Nikkei Business, Tech-on, ITpro, Sumally, and Tabelog. More will be added in the future.

Japan was the third country (after China and France) to get a localized edition of Flipboard, and the nation ranks among the service’s top countries.

It was just a couple of weeks back that Flipboard celebrated its second birthday. Currently it has more than 20 million users in total, adding a new user every second on average.

[Image: rbbtoday.com]

Japanese ad giant Dentsu (TYO:4324) has released an iPhone application which aims to help you find nearby food and restaurants a little bit easier. It’s called FoodKing.

When you’re looking for a place to eat, the location-based app asks you to choose your category of food and then presents you with nearby options. The service is still just starting out, so unfortunately I received the ‘no results in your area’ message. Dentsu’s announcement notes:

Most [restaurant and food searches] are still centered around searching for restaurants in particular, but the newly released FoodKing enables searching for the particular food item of interest in your area, based on your location.

I confess this approach seems wrong to me, unless you are in a very densely packed urban area like central Tokyo. In that case, where choice abounds I can see the benefit of narrowing the parameters before showing a list of restaurant options.

Dentsu notes that this app was released globally, “so that users can communicate through food reviews throughout the world.” And I can’t really see it being useful anywhere but Tokyo unless it makes some adjustments. Thankfully, FoodKing is inviting some feedback and suggestions via their App Store page.

Update Sept 4: A representative elaborates that FoodKing is aiming to help the user find food, rather than restaurants:

Restaurant search is flawed. There are certain dishes that people wouldn’t fathom being included in menus of certain restaurants. For example, you might find the best Dim Sung at a Japanese restaurant, and not a Chinese restaurant. Maybe you can find the best burger at a Korean restaurant, and not the hamburger joint around the corner. Typical restaurant searches don’t produce results like those, unless somebody is nice enough to include them in the comments of the restaurants.

As for reviews, I found I could bring up a list of nearly places to review, so I FoodKing has pre-loaded some points of interest somehow. Update: I’m told this is using the FourSquare API.

While it’s far from perfect yet, I’m a big fan of any app that maps places to eat in my neighborhood. The food categories appear quite Japan-centric, so perhaps there’s an element of promoting local Japanese businesses to tourists here.

I tried to contact Dentsu earlier today to learn more about this, and I’ll let you know if I hear any reply. But for now, if you’d like to test out the app, you can find it here on the App Store. Depending on your location, your mileage may vary.

Naver Matome

Dentsu Public Relations has conducted a survey into the usage of news aggregators in Japan (such as Naver Matome or 2 Channel Matome), and has come up with some interesting findings.

When the company asked 10,000 individuals if they had ever used news aggregators, 36.5 percent of respondents said that they had. Furthermore, 18.5 percent were found to be heavy users, or that is to say that they used such sites on a regular/daily basis.

Dentsu notes that men in their twenties showed the highest usage at about 90 percent, while just 10 percent of men in their 50s were heavy users. Looking back at a report last year from ComScore on how different demographics kept informed after the tragic earthquake, we can also see this tendency of younger segments towards new internet media.

The use of aggregator sites been much debated, not only in Japan but in the West as well. 2 Channel has recently had issues with summary sites and blogs that collected and presented its content in the past. But it’s hard to deny that such sites, whether in blog form or otherwise, are useful in that they bring together and collect information from a wide range of sources into one convenient place.

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu, D2C, and Bijutsu Shuppan Networks Co. Ltd have officially announced the release of the Dcloud platform [1] which will provide emoji for you to use on your Android smartphone.

You’re probably thinking that adding smiley faces to your phone isn’t a very big deal. But according to Dentsu, the emoji market has been worth a yearly $300 million in Japan. And indeed the Dcloud Base App, which delivers the emoji cloud service that can then be used in other Dcloud-enabled apps, will give the option for paid premium membership after downloading. Premium users get more emoji and are able to access 20 ‘palette’ of smileys from the portal site while regular members can only download two.

But what’s remarkable here is that Dentsu is targeting smartphone users worldwide, not just those in Japan. Just as GREE and DeNA are attempting to port Japanese mobile gaming monetization strategies overseas via the smartphone platform, it looks like Dentsu wants to make a similar move with emoji for mobile. They even have a Tokyo Emoji Girls blog and Sina Weibo account to assist with the marketing.

Besides the Dcloud Base App, there are two other apps being announced today: DecoMessage, which is a free Dcloud SMS application; and Decora, a free Dcloud email application. Both, of course will have emoji support thanks to the Dcloud Base App.

As a part of a special campaign, Dcloud premium membership will be available for free until July 31. So if you’d like to see what the full experience is like, you can try it out.

To learn more, check out their demo video below, or click on over to dcloud.jpn.com to find out more.

The Japanese advertising agency Dentsu (TYO:4324), which is one of the world’s largest advertisers, is expanding its reach even further having just announced that it’ll open an office in Singapore tomorrow. The new digital agency in the country will be called Dentsu Mobius, and is being set up with SG$6.3 million (US$4.89 million) worth of backing from Tokyo HQ.

The Singapore office will be headed up by two managing directors: Angeli T. Beltran, who’s also the executive regional director at Dentsu Asia, and James Hawkins. They’ll oversee 30 employees at Dentsu Mobius. The new office is being described as a “specialist digital agency” that will be at the center of the company’s digital business in the region. That includes the likes of Dentsu’s Facebook ad sales deal, which was recently extended when Mark Zuckerberg dropped in to the Japanese capital.

Dentsu’s corporate communications manager in Tokyo explained to Tech in Asia:

Interactive communication is one of Dentsu’s strengths, and the establishment of Dentsu Mobius will allow us to blaze new trails in the mobile advertising markets of Southeast Asia.

Singapore is the latest stop on Dentsu’s journey of overseas expansion. It already has 168 offices around the world in 28 countries. The company has also been enlisted by compatriot GREE in its bid to take its mobile gaming platform around the world.

Photo: Gigazine

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu (TYO:4324) has today announced that it has acquired a 15.06 percent stake in Kakaku.com (TYO:2371), a price comparison engine in Japan which we have written about a few times before.

The stake is to be purchased from Kakaku’s main shareholder, Culture Convenience Club. According to Reuters this evening, Dentsu is looking to “advance internet advertising and digital marketing,” and tying up with Kakaku should help on that front.

Our readers may recognize Dentsu as the same company that was enlisted by GREE to assist in its overseas promotion, and it is also Facebook’s official ad sales and marketing representative in Japan.

As Serkan Toto points out in his report about this over on Asiajin, Kakaku also runs the online restaurant guide/website Tabelog, which is also quite popular. On a somewhat related note, it was just about a week back that Kakaku announced Tabelog would be getting Facebook sharing functions, injecting a little bit more social into the service.

As for Kakaku, I personally hope it continues to do well because speaking as a terribly cheap online shopper, I’m a huge fan of such price comparison services. I’ll have a little more to say on that subject later this evening.

Photo: Gigazine

Photo: PMO's Facebook page

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu (TYO:4324) announced (pdf) with Facebook today that their one year partnership, which saw Dentsu act as the social network’s official ad sales and marketing representative in Japan, is to be extended.

Facebook’s current monthly active user count in Japan is about 10 million, but is growing at a rate that must surely strike fear into domestic rival Mixi, whose growth has plateaued of late.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in Tokyo yesterday too (I’m not sure to what extent, if at all, the events are related). And while his trip to China didn’t prove to be particularly interesting [1], his stop in Japan appears to have been a little more productive. In addition to this news from Dentsu which coincides with Zuckerberg’s visit, Softbank’s Masayoshi Son also just happened to create a Facebook account yesterday.

And as you can see in the picture above, Zuckerberg also took time to visit the Japanese Prime Minister [2], with the official Facebook page of PM’s Office proudly displayed behind them. He also made a stop at last night’s Mobile Hack Tokyo event, and gave a short speech (mostly just pleasantries) which you can check out below.

Facebook’s growth in Japan has been interesting to watch. From my own point of view, perhaps a far more telling metric than monthly active users or page views is that the word Facebook is creeping into the conversations of regular people that I know here. It’s not just geeks and early adopters anymore. And while Facebook didn’t always look like a sure thing in Japan, it’s certainly winning over Japanese friends at a pretty solid pace right now.

Hot on the heels of its first game release from its North American studio, in Zombie Jombie, Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is announcing a partnership with advertising company Dentsu (TYO:4324) to help with the promotion of its global business and expansion.

Dentsu, which has 168 offices around the world in 28 countries, will also be working with GREE in other business areas as well, according to today’s announcement:

GREE and Dentsu will expand into new businesses, such as venture investments in the mobile sector, co-development of advertizing business utilizing social media, among others, fully utilizing both of their strengths.

GREE also announced a partnership with fellow gaming giant Level-5 just a few days ago, saying that the two companies would be bringing three of its popular titles to the GREE global platform. The titles will be the RPGS card game Ni No Kuni: Daibouken Monsters, as well as Inazuma Eleven: Atsumeyouze, and Little Battlers eXperience.

It will be interesting to see exactly how successful GREE’s overseas expansion will be. The company certainly seems to be sparing no effort. It will also be attending the upcoming E3 gaming conference this June, by which time its new global platform, formed after its buying up OpenFeint, should be ready.

Japanese advertising giant Dentsu (TYO: 4324) has partnered with Japan Post Service Co. Ltd. to develop a Facebook page/app which enables users to send each other physical greeting cards without knowing the recipient’s actual address.

It’s called Postman, and you can access the service by going to facebook.com/postman.jp. As you might expect, the services is not free, and card prices are (as far as we can see) all under 630 yen. There are cards for Christmas, New Year, birthdays, weddings, as well as fun Japanese art designs like Ukiyo-e. You can also make your own card using a photo of your own design. Some of the designs can be viewed below.

Once you’ve selected your card, you then choose your recipient who must approve that it be sent. They would then specify their address (which is not disclosed to the sender), so that the card could be sent. Payment is made by the sender using a credit card, and besides the initial price of the cards, some small shipping fees also apply.

Japan Post is ostensibly attempting to bring in some new business with this initiative, as they were last month with their eBay tie-up. As for Dentsu, the company struck a partnership with Facebook back in February, and this Postman app was developed with the support of the social networking giant.

Fun 8-bit Christmas Card

Japanese design

Japanese design

But with regards to online ad spending, I’d posit that the reason Japan can’t keep pace with China is because of its aging population. Older demographics likely mean a preference for traditional media, and as we saw in our recent report concerning Japanese ad-giant Dentsu. Internet only accounted for 13.3 percent of its ad spending last year, barely surpassing newspaper ad spending at 11 percent. Japanese newspaper circulation has been huge in past years, and is likely still doing pretty good.

eMarketer projects that at their current pace, Japan and China will both be spending about $9.5 billion in three year’s time. While I’m not aware of all the factors that went into this projection, China still has much more room to develop online than Japan, so the prediction seems logical at least. New data from iResearch today shows that video ad revenue alone took a huge jump recently, at 1.48 billion yuan (about $231 million) for Q2 2011, up from a billion in Q1.

We’ve seen a big trend in recent months of Japanese companies looking to expand to overseas markets. And while most of them will cite the positives of those markets overseas, it would be hard to believe they aren’t also worried about a shrinking market a home.

The agreement centers on displaying ads in the “Skype Home” area, a large display space that can feature interactive ads. It applies to Skype for Windows (version 5.1+) and is effective immediately.

You may remember that back in early March, Dentsu landed a partnership with Facebook to be its ad sales representative in Japan. Prior to that in 2010, the agency landed a similar deal to sell Apple’s iAds.

According to Dentsu, the internet only made up about 13.3 percent of all its advertising expenditure in 2010. Most of the money is still going to traditional media, television in particular taking nearly 30 percent (see below).

[Source: Dentsu via Techcrunch]

“Dentsu will be a valuable partner for us as we seek to support marketers in Japan to connect and engage with their customers,” said Blake Chandlee, Vice President & Commercial Director, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Emerging Markets, Facebook.

“Dentsu understands the unique social marketing opportunity on Facebook, and will work directly with brands here to help them create and implement campaigns that will impact their businesses in meaningful ways,” he added.

Despite the recent buzz on Facebook’s failure in Japan, the social network continues to grow strongly in the country. According to Social Bakers, Japan currently houses more than 2.5 million Facebook users and the figure is growing at a healthy monthly rate (25 percent). Just last month alone, Japan added more than half a million users. While Facebook’s number is still small, the growth has been encouraging.

“As communication styles diversify, social networking, which directly connects consumers to other consumers, has become a vital communications medium in the world today,” said Dentsu Executive Officer Akira Sugimoto. “I believe that our collaboration with Facebook will play a key role in our initiatives to further strengthen links between consumers and corporations.”

Details of the partnership below:

1. As Facebook’s official ad sales representative in the Japanese market, Dentsu will obtain from Facebook the latest technical information and examples of how to use the services, and will provide consulting services to advertisers and media companies.
2. With the cooperation of Facebook, Dentsu will create Facebook Pages that maximize the platform’s functions in order to provide added value to advertisers and media companies.
3. Dentsu will have exclusive sales rights to the premium advertising space on Facebook for a one-year period from February 18, 2011, and will develop new advertising strategies in Japan that link advertisements in the mass media (such as television, newspapers, magazines and radio) with advertisements on Facebook.
4. Utilizing the technical support provided by Facebook, Dentsu will develop new plans and business related to advertisements and promotions that utilize the Facebook platform.
5. Dentsu will proactively incorporate into its proposals to clients Facebook Premium Ads with social context that Facebook currently offers.

Via Asiajin