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A Look Into Japan's Burgeoning App Economy
Jan 28, 7:01PM
Japan, long called the “Galapagos Islands” of the mobile industry for its cornucopia of sophisticated and unusual feature phones, is finally transitioning to Android and iOS in a serious way. Given the country’s historically high levels of spending on mobile apps and games, it’s becoming a market that Android and iOS developers can’t ignore. For one, it surpassed the U.S. as the most lucrative market for Google Play last fall. App Annie, a mobile app intelligence firm that started out of Beijing, took an in-depth look at the Japanese market. Ironically, Japan has had a relatively slow transition to smartphones if you consider how advanced handsets were throughout the last decade. At the end of 2011, only 23 percent of handsets being used in the country were smartphones. That’s because the carriers like NTT DoCoMo, Softbank and KDDI are extraordinarily powerful. They, like their counterparts in the rest of the world, have historically been the gatekeepers for content. They took a revenue share (although often not as high as Apple’s 30 percent cut) on purchases made through smartphones. That allowed freemium gaming companies like GREE and DeNA to blossom into multi-billion dollar businesses well before we saw similar companies mature in the West. Like in the rest of the world, the iPhone threatens carrier power. NTT DoCoMo doesn’t partner with Apple. It can’t control the flow or sale of content through the iTunes store, which threatens an important revenue stream for the company. They instead focus on Android, and promote their own carrier stores — called "dmenu," which is a portal for accessing internet-based content, and "dmarket," which is a market offering videos, music, books, and apps. Meanwhile, KDDI and Softbank have offered the iPhone, and in turn are gaining subscribers at the expense of DoCoMo. Because of these dynamics, two-thirds of Japan’s smartphone population is on Android, while the other third is on the iPhone. Even in spite of this, Apple’s app store easily beats Google Play on revenue. But this gap is narrowing like it is in other markets. The other thing to note is that Japan is an incredibly hard market to break into. The top five publishers dominate, with nearly one-third of all revenues (and they’re all Japanese). The success that domestic game developers have had in the featurephone era has crossed over into smartphone as well. Japanese companies absolutely dominate the local charts in terms of revenue.Google Challenges Hackers To Pwn Chrome OS In Pwnium 3 Competition, Offers Up To $3.14159M In Prizes
Jan 28, 6:41PM
Competitions like Pwn2Own are a staple of the security research scene and with Pwnium 3, Google today announced the latest edition of its own competition. What's different this time around is the target. For the first time, the focus of the Pwnium competition is now Chrome OS, Google's Linux-based browser-centric operating system. In total, Google is making up to $3.14159 million in Apple's Rumored Budget iPhone Could Be A Plastic Hybrid Of The iPhone 5, Touch, And Classic
Jan 28, 6:14PM
The latest rumors, ridiculous or not, point to two new iPhone models this year — one would be the expected iPhone 5S and the other would be a lower-cost plastic model aimed at developing markets. None of this is confirmed, but iLounge claims to have information on what the alleged lower-cost plastic model might look like. According to the report, the new model will be a combination between the iPhone 5's front, the iPod touch 5th gen bottom, and an overall shape similar to that of the iPod classic.Intuit Acquires Facebook Ecommerce Platform Payvment's Team, Tech, And Patents While Ecwid Takes Its 200K Merchants
Jan 28, 6:05PM
Earlier today Facebook ecommerce platform Payvment announced it was shutting down and transitioning its 200,000 merchants to competitor Ecwid, but we've just discovered that's because Intuit is acquiring Payvment's team, technology, and patents. Several Payvment employees have already changed their LinkedIn profiles to show Intuit as their new home.A Congress That Does Things? Immigration Reform Makes Huge Bipartisan Progress
Jan 28, 6:02PM
The new Congress is showing signs that it may finally leave behind its old habit of doing nothing: A gang of eight senators from both parties has outlined a framework for comprehensive immigration reform. While progress could get bogged down in details as the legislation comes together, the bipartisan love fest bodes well for tech companies eager to hire more high-skilled immigrants.Weddings Startup Lover.ly Scores Content And Ad Deal With Real Simple, Prepares Website Relaunch And New Mobile Apps
Jan 28, 6:00PM
Lover.ly, a search engine for all things wedding, is today making a move that will broaden its reach considerably: The company is announcing a partnership with Real Simple to power the content for the site's first-ever online weddings channel. Real Simple, which is best known for its magazine about home decor, beauty and fashion (it's like an offline version of Pinterest), will now be helping to sell Lover.ly's advertising inventory as a part of this deal.Google Makes Using Analytics Easier With New Solution Gallery For Dashboards, Segments & Custom Reports
Jan 28, 5:50PM
Google Analytics is such a powerful tool, its huge feature set can often be intimidating for novice users. Now, however, with today's launch of the creatively named Google Analytics Solution Gallery, Google is hoping to make many of the service's advanced features a bit more accessible to new users. The Solution Gallery features pre-made dashboards, advanced segments and custom reports for a wide range of businesses, including ecommerce sites, brands and publishers.Whoops! Google Map Of Gun Permit Holders Was Woefully Inaccurate
Jan 28, 5:43PM
When the Journal News caused a national uproar and endangered the lives of its staff to create a Google Map of gun permit holders in New York, it was justified for the cause of transparency and civic dialog. Unfortunately, it now appears that the map was woefully inaccurate, possibly implicating citizens who had died, ditched their guns, or moved. "Nobody ever called and verified the address," said Mike Smith, who was surprised to see his address on the map, and apparently was marked after his brother had used his address when he applied for a handgun licence. Whoops!PlayerScale Says Its Gaming Infrastructure Is Being Used By 100M People
Jan 28, 5:38PM
PlayerScale, which provides a range of backend services for game developers, is announcing today that its platform now has more than 100 million players. Since PlayerScale is building the infrastructure rather than the games themselves, it's unlikely that many of those 100 million actually think of themselves as "PlayerScale users," or are necessarily aware of the platform at all. Nonetheless, the announcement suggests that PlayerScale's tools are being used by a broad audience of gamers. (CEO Jesper Jensen told me that users create in-game profiles and log in through Facebook, so while it's possible that there are a few "repeats," for the most part these are unique users.)Social Ads Upstart Unified Acquires YC-Backed Facebook Analytics Guru PageLever
Jan 28, 5:29PM
Businesses won't spend money on social if they don't understand how it helps them. That's why Unified's social ads buying platform could get a big boost from its acquisition of PageLever, which gives marketers deep insight into the impact of their social strategies. PageLever's detailed analysis can show brands what and how often to post on Facebook, and which of those posts to turn into ads. PageLever was founded in late 2010 by Jeff Widman (a former TechCrunch intern) and David Turner, and it received funding from Y Combinator. I can attest to the quality of its data. The company has long provided me with statistics to help me understand the impact of Facebook's myriad changes to the news feed. For example, PageLever's data showed that by making it easier for users to to flag Facebook Page posts as spam, many Pages received many for flags than before. That caused some of them to lose organic reach in the news feed -- which sparked a huge debate.White BlackBerry Z10 Caught On Film Days Before Its Official Unveiling
Jan 28, 5:14PM
After months of stoking anticipation and dealing with criticism, RIM will finally reveal BlackBerry 10 to the world on Wednesday. It's got to be a heady moment for everyone involved -- this is the company's big shot at redemption and relevance -- but until then the rest of us will just have to make do with another batch of leaked BB10 hardware photos.365Scores Secures $1.2M Series A Round, Puts Out Improved iOS/Android App
Jan 28, 5:13PM
You may be getting your sports results on your smartphone from one of the major results providers like ESPN, MLB NFL, but a number of others have appeared in the space. One getting traction and now funding is 365Scores, an online sports notification app. The Tel-Aviv-based startup has today signed a $1.2 million Series A round funding from Cedar Fund, Tal Elyashiv and Shy Datika in order to grow the product.BetaBait, A Service For Finding Beta Users And App Testers, Hits The Deadpool
Jan 28, 5:11PM
BetaBait, a service that connects startups with people to try and test early "beta" versions of web and mobile apps, is shutting down effective February 1st, 2013. The company, which first launched a year ago in December 2011, announced the closure in an email sent to users.Ashton Kutcher Was Hospitalized After Trying Steve Jobs' Fruitarian Diet
Jan 28, 5:04PM
Method actors are known to go to extreme lengths to understand the character they're portraying. Natalie Portman dropped a whopping 20 lbs off of her already rockin' body to play a ballerina in Black Swan. Ashton Kutcher's preparation for playing Steve Jobs in the biopic jOBS was so extreme it left him in the hospital. According to USA Today, he spent two days in the hospital after trying to stick to Steve Jobs' frutarian diet, which consists of eating fruits, nuts and seeds.Facebook Launches "Ask Our Chief Privacy Officer" To Replace Policy Voting With Understanding
Jan 28, 4:57PM
To "enable you to send us your questions, concerns, and feedback about privacy," Facebook today launched "Ask Our Chief Privacy Officer." Questions submitted through the form on Facebook's Privacy Page will be answered once a month in a Note by CPO Erin Egan. It's one alternative for having your voice heard that Facebook announced would replace the recently abolished policy voting system.Acer's $199 Chromebook Now Accounts For 5-10% Of All Of Its U.S. Shipments
Jan 28, 4:30PM
Acer's ChromeOS-based Chromebooks, the company's president Jim Wong told Bloomberg today, accounted for "5 percent to 10 percent of Acer's U.S. shipments since being released there in November." Google itself has generally been reluctant to share any information about shipments of devices with its browser-centric Linux-based operating system and we haven't heard any concrete numbers from Samsung, Google's other main Chromebook manufacturer either. Acer currently only offers one Chromebook, the WiFi-only $199 C7 model.TaskRabbit Launches Business Dashboard Aimed At Companies Looking For Temp Workers At SXSW
Jan 28, 4:19PM
With a new corporate-minded COO in place, TaskRabbit is setting its sights on the business world. The company, which runs an online marketplace to let people pay to outsource jobs and errands to background-checked individuals, today announced "TaskRabbit for business" which is dedicated to helping companies source temporary workers for short-term jobs. To kick off the concept, TaskRabbit is launching a business-focused web portal that will be available in Austin, Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive conference coming up in early March.Deezer Takes On Spotify With Expansions In Middle East, Africa, Brazil And Asia
Jan 28, 4:12PM
Deezer, the music streaming service which raised $130 million this fall to expand its business internationally, is today making good on those ambitions with launches in twenty-two new regions across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Brazil. Included in the rollout are the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates, among others. The company is also touting its claim to fame as the first legal streaming service in the Maghreb region of Africa."Human Error" Caused Vine's DildoPlay Editor's Pick
Jan 28, 4:10PM
This morning, new Vine users woke up to quite the treat. Twitter's new video sharing app launched a NSFW, porn clip called "DildoPlay" to the top of the Editor's Picks section of the app, a place where users can browse the latest and greatest vines. Vine only launched last week, and has already been reported as having a small porn problem. Searching the hashtag #porn within the app will give you a peek at what I'm talking about. This is expected from almost any new visually focused social network. If you build it, sex will come.Twitter Gets More Transparent With A New, Dedicated Site Reporting 6,646 Copyright Complaints And 1,858 Gov't Info Requests
Jan 28, 3:58PM
Twitter, now at 200 million monthly active users, is ramping up to be a big player in content delivery with embedded video services from Vine the latest move in that direction. But to play nice with rights holders and authorities, it is also making sure that it's keeping all activity clean. To that end, today the company launched a new, dedicated site, transparency.twitter.com, where it will house all updated stats and other information linked to information requests from government officials, copyright flags from content companies, and full-blown takedown requests.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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