Great presentations from local Japanese entrepreneurs, consultants, technology experts. These notes are crude but you’ll get the idea.
Tsuruaki Presentation:
- typing captions on top of videos is very popular
- people pay for things with mobile phone or small touchless RFID devices and earn points that way (like our AMEX points I assume?)
- Rakuten – Hiroshi Miktani, CEO
- Masayoshi Son – runs Softbank, which owns much of Yahoo! Japan
-” Whoever rules Asian mobile space rules the world”
- Asian-Pacific region accounts for 41% of internet users
- Japan – 90mm 3g handsets
- Joint innovation lab: trying to develop a common platform across phones and carriers
- Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, Softbank, China Mobile
- Suica
- 1.5 mm mobile users
- used to pay for all public transit systems via mobile phones
- can be used to purchase things from vending machines all over the city
- Coupons
- McDonalds just won a mobile advertising away for a mobile app that allows you to pick what you want to eat on the phone, swipe the phone at the counter, and that places your order (discount built in). Ordering process now takes 10 sec.
- This allows mcdonalds to target to its customers – basically serves as a CRM for them
- client hardware is all owned by consumers, keeps it simple
Presenter: Gen Miyazawa
Mobage-town
- 13mm members, 15b pageviews
- mobile gaming (mini games)
- users need virtual money (moba-gold) to play
- high CTR
- Their site in the US is called “MobaMingle”
- “Super Galapagos Strategy (???)
Mixi - the facebook of Japan
- 17mm members, 10B pageviews
- Ad revenue slowing down in recession
- First major mobile SNS supporting OpenSocial (google)
- opening their ad platform and payment platform to developers
GREE - Japanese SNS – 10mm members
- Virtual pets and a fishing game drive their traffic
- charging users for digital content working well
- most profitable SNS in Japan now
eBooks (electronic comics)
- content very popular with younger crowd. Market size ~ 30mm USD – growing 2.5x yoy
- content gneerated in China very inepensively and distributed in Japan – high margins
Tokyo Girls Collection
- fashion show where spectators can buy garments worn by the models via mobile phones
- Fast Food Chains reallocating TV ad spend to mobile
