Tokyu Corporation (en. Wiki), the company behind Tokyu Lines, Tokyu department stores and Tokyu Hands, collaborated with Tokyo University and developed a social bookmarking application for the iPhone. After a testing periode of about 5month with volunteering students at the beginning of 2009, they finally released that app in the App Store today.
Pin@clip (website), pronounced “pina-kuri”, is a new social bookmark application for the infamous Shibuya area. Users can take pictures, write comments and reviews of things they like in Shibuya.
Like “Sekai Camera“, the Japanese augmented reality app from Tonchidot (Insider Info: New version of “Sekai Camera” will be released after the promo Event tomorrow, Dec. 2nd, in Ginza Apple store) users can use the build in iPhone camera and the compass to get information directly on your camera screen.
Beside user generated content, shop information (address, phone, Google maps) about near places are automatically added to the post (if already in the database). The post can be linked to the users twitter account and even the music, that you listen on your iPhone while writing the post or taking the picture, is automatically posted.
The search function allows to search for near-by places, filtered by distance, time to go there, genres, recommendations and bookmarks.
On the button right of the application you’ll find a Tokyu Hands symbol that will show a floor guide of Tokyu Hands if you check out some product posted from inside Tokyu Hands. On some recommendations you’ll also have a Tokyu Hands sign to signalize the location where you can buy it. Additionally mood messages can be added to each post to show your feeling towards the shop, place or product. Comments are not yet possible but a rating function.
All in all a very innovative application from Tokyu Corporation. There’s no additional advertising in this free appliation yet and, except of the small Tokyu Hands icons on some posts, you don’t realize that you are in a promo app. Big up! Get pin@clip now HERE and start tagging. Shibuya will never be the same again…
Columbia Sportswear Company (USA), mostly focusing on outdoor sports, came up with a great ecological idea to transfer their lifestyle concept of “Reduce, Re-use and Recycle” to their customers. The so called “A Box Life” project was brought to life by the simple idea of re-using cardboard boxes to reduce costs and avoid thousands of boxes being thrown away every day.
Cardboard boxes sometimes travel a long way around the world. That’s why Columbia came up with the idea to bring a special feature: A tracking service by QR codes. All boxes have “A Box Life”-sticker with a QR-code on it. Scanning this QR code with a mobile phone leads to a mobile side where users can not only track where their box is traveling right now, but also where the box was first send from and which rout it came till it arrived at your doorsteps. As a social component users can also can also submit location based messages on the mobile site to share and interact with other people who used the same box. The life of a box can also be tracked and seen on the PC website, where the 5 most traveled boxes can be seen on a google map, in addition with the number of participants, miles traveled and therefore “saved” boxes. Soon users will be able to submit pictures of themselves with the boxes and build something like “social travel books” of these boxes.
All in all a very innovative and ecologic project from Colombia. It would be great to extend this (till now) US-only project worldwide. We think that this kind of project could be a great PR success in many countries, especially in the ECO-trendy Japan. Even when u think about the fact that the right packaging is sometimes much more important to Japanese than the real content, this kind of project could promise great success in the economically struggling Japan and even create a new trend of package conscientiousness and ECO-lifestyle.
au KDDI and CASIO just started the promotion for their latest mobile phone Exilim CA003. The CA003 features a 3.3inch WVGA OLED display, a 28mm wide angle lens with 3x optical zoom and autofocus and impressive 12.2 megapixles. Additionally they released a smaller version called CA004 with a smaller resolution, smaller memory and smaller display but same functionality.
The promotion focuses on the new advanced features of these two devices, especially the possibility to create dynamic photos directly on the phone. So called “DECO-MONSTERS”, a line up of grotesque characters, can be downloaded to the phone and then be used in decoration emails. These so called deco-mails are the most popular way in Japan to express feelings in emails by using animations, HTML styling and emojis.
Additional the DECO-MONSTERS can be integrated as animations in regular photos taken by these Casio phones.
It’s even possible to create our own motion pictures with a special camera function, cut out the background, put on some astonishing effects and integrate your own animation into your pictures.
DECO-MONSTER promotion is a very clever and creative way to promote new products – Japanese style. It’s an exclusive content for users of the two latest Casio phones that add a special value to the actual product. On the one hand possessors of these new phones can use “cute” and “funny” content in mails and pictures or easily create their own dynamic pictures directly on their mobile device. On the other hand most other phones will be able to receive DECO-MONSTER mails and MONSTER motion pictures. So spreading MONSTER mails means spreading word about the new Casio phones and it’s features. Fun and special value for the user, big promotion and traffic for au KDDI and Casio.
Japan.Internet.com and goo research just published results from their latest studies about ‘PC internet usage at home’. Concerning these results 98.3% of Japanese have a fixed internet connection at home and over 70% use internet at home more than 1h every day. When it comes to holidays or days off astonishing 22% of Japanese become hardcore internet users with a usage of more than 6h per day. About 25% of these hardcore users surf the web even more than 12h per day off. Compared to the last survey end of 2008 the heavy users ratio increase by more than 1%. Did the internet turn into an alternative to going out and meeting people on holidays in times of recession?
There is hardly a subway or train in Japan where you can’t see somebody using a portable game device like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. While portable game machines directly indicate someone is playing games, the mobile phone is a ubiquitous device which allows access to all kinds of content in a private setting also while in public. Always in arm’s reach, mobile phones in Japan were used as gaming devices from the beginning. Today about 40 million Japanese play games on their mobile phones frequently. And mobile games are played 4-5 times longer than on any other (portable) gaming consoles.
The mobile marketing company, Data Labo, just published new data about mobile gaming in Japan based on a survey conducted between August 21st and 24th 2009.
Mobile game genres
The number one game genre for mobile phones in 2009 is ‘Brain games’. Japanese love quizzes and math games that seem to improve knowledge and brain activity. Like in all aging societies, Japanese believe and invest in brain games to contribute to their lifelong learning progress. Demographic changes and the recession might be reasons why ‘brain games’ climbed up two ranks in one year to the top genre for mobile gaming in Japan.
The number 2 genre for mobile phone games is traditional ‘table games’, like Mahjong and all varieties of card games. These kind of games will always be in the top ranking in Japan. Well-known, quick and easy to play and timeless enjoyment.
Fallen down from the top rank are ‘role playing games’, now the number 3 genre for mobile games in 2009.
Trend: Renai Simulation
Another trend in mobile gaming can be seen in the increase of people playing ‘Love Simulation Games’. Popular for both boys and girls, these type of games simulate a romantic relationship under more or less realistic circumstances. In short: A kind of (Japanese style) dream love story adventure with interaction possibilities.
In 2009 39.5% of all young Japanese in their teens play these ‘Renai Simulations’ on a regular basis, an increase of 18.7% over last year. But, these kind of games also popular amongst housewives and older people.
SNS go gaming
Another trend in mobile gaming is away from special gaming portals, towards social network gaming.
The top three SNS in Japan: Mixi, Mobage-town and GREE turn out to battle in mobile gaming.
Mobage-town and GREE offer a huge variety of games, avatars and in-game purchase possibilities. Both mobile networks specialized in offering free games, lite versions of popular games and paid content rather than on advertising. Depending only on advertising, Mixi is now playing catch up with these two booming platforms and recently opened ‘Mixi appli’, a Facebook-app-like integrated application and gaming platform inside Mixi. Let’s see if Mixi, Japans biggest SNS, can jump on the SNS game trend in Japan.
Another interesting finding in the survey is that more girls than boys play games on SNS. Also Girls prefer GREE and boys prefer Mobage-town.
28% of Japanese play mobile games every day
There is a big gap between mobile gamers and non-gamers. Overall 27.6% of Japanese play almost every day. 31% are male and 27.1% are female. On the other hand 44% of Japanese barely play any mobile games. Therefore you can say that Japan has a solid base (28%) of heavy users who enjoy playing games every day and a 44% base of non gamers with virtually no interest. SNS may have a potential in bridging between social networking and casual gaming, opening the chance to make use of their user base by recruiting from the grey zone: the frequent players.
Further thoughts
Mobile gaming also plays a major role in western markets like Europe and the US. In Germany and France for example over 65% of teenagers are downloading mobile games.
Japan can serve as a good inspiration for future mobile gaming applications, services and business models in other markets. On the other hand there is also a potential for foreign game creators to monetize their content here in Japan or even deploy new services first here, and then expand to other Asian and Western markets.
