If you have accessed this site over the past few weeks, you may have noticed this banner popping up quite prominently: The banner links to the site of my consultancy, “Kantan Games, Inc.” (in English and Japanese). “Kantan” is Japanese for “simple” or...
LINE Ties Up With Salesforce To Provide Targeted Ads To Users
According to a report just published in the Nikkei Keizai Shimbun Online, LINE Corp. is planning to combine user data with a cloud CRM solution from Salesforce.com to deliver targeted ads to the users of its messenger app. The new ad service is exclusively aimed at companies that are operating...
The Monster Strike Effect: Mixi’s Market Cap Is Now Higher Than That Of DeNA
A lot has been written and said about how hit-driven the mobile game business has become over the last few years, but if the industry needed another bit of evidence, here it is: the market cap of Mixi (2121), Japan’s once biggest social network, has eclipsed that of Mobage operator DeNA...
Japan’s Tablet Market Continues To Grow, Apple Loses Market Share
Tokyo-based MM Research Institute released an overview on the Japanese market for tablets yesterday. According to the report, a total of 7.48 million units were shipped domestically in fiscal 2013 (April 2013-March 2014), which is up 30.5% year-on-year. This number is slightly above the projection...
Monster Strike: The Story Behind The Game That Made Mixi A Billion Dollar Company (Again)
Mixi (2121), Japan’s once largest social network , is back from the dead. In September 2006, Mixi was the first s0-called Web 2.0 startup ever to go IPO and managed to maintain its status as a large-cap company for years until it stopped innovating and was hit by a flood of competitors:...
The Nikkei: LINE Plans To Go Public At Tokyo Stock Exchange In 2014
Mega-popular communication app LINE has come a long way since launch in summer 2011 in Japan, with many people speculating about a possible IPO coming soon. And now the cat is out of the bag, it seems: Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting on its website it learned LINE Corp., the company...