Japan Digest – 29 Jul

Here you can find interesting startup news from Japan, not only from its capital, Tokyo, but also other startup hubs like Fukuoka, Kyoto, Osaka, and many more.

(1) KDDI, Japanese Microsoft, and a Fujitsu Toshiba mobile communications announced on July 27 the “IS12T” phone, equipped with Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed Mango, which is the first in Japan. The colors are three colors “Citrus”, “Magenta”, and “Black”.

(2) Mobile social games leader ngmoco, a DeNA Co., Ltd. company, announced with DeNA that its Mobage social games platform for Android has been released in English-speaking countries around the world; the service is slated to expand to other territories and mobile platforms soon.

(3) All Japanese analog terrestrial television broadcasting were terminated today at 12:00 p.m. July 24 (Japan Standard Time) as planned, with the aim of more effective radio wave usage by re-assigning their bands from analog TV to newly introduced digital TV. They have been simultaneously broadcast until today.

(4) Colish, a project born out of Startup Weekend Tokyo in May, provides a meeting point for like-minded people to share a house with.

(5) In press conference, DeNA announced the formation of the “Super Creators” initiative, an all-star team of five veteran game designers from the traditional Japanese games industry who will create social smartphone games for Mobage. All games will be published by AQ Interactive.

(6) Cyber Agent has released the new social game “World Chef” for Facebook, a restaurant simulation social game which allows users to play using the same avatar data from Ameba Pico.

(7) Opt, an interactive agency, has begun to implement the social recommendation application market “myappee”, which knows which Android apps are popular based on “Like this” and user tweets. New applications are also open for registration.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.