Who were the winner of NFC?

iPhone 5 is allegedly going to equip NFC controllers in its hardware, and many people in the mobile phone industry are expecting that the era of wallet-phone will be coming just around the corner.


However it is well-known fact, but wallet-mobile phone is nothing new in the mobile scene in Japan.

Sony developed NFC chip in 1988, and named it Felica. Sony tried to dominate the digital money market by issuing its own digital money card called Edy.  Though you may be still able to see the logo of Edy at a cashier of major convenience store, Edy business has not expanded as expected.

At the same time back then, various mobile phones which equipped Felica IC chip were launched, but it could not dominate the market neither.




The most prevailed Felica card is not as a mobile phone, but prevailed as a card which is similar size and shape of credit card when railway companies issued the card.

Since then, this type of card expanded exponentially.

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So, the real winner of the past business of NFC was a railway company, not mobile phone companies, nor the device companies.

Sony was also a winner of this Felica business because it earned huge profit from the patent revenue. But the NFC standard that is to be equipped in the future mobile phones is new standard and Sony can no longer expect the reveue from there.


What we can see from the scene in Japan is that though new NFC standard is welcomed mostly by mobile phone companies, still other social infrastructure companies, such as railway, airlines, or taxi companies may find the business chance in  NFC and dominate the market.

Can SNS Gaming companies in Japan survive?

Sometimes, various things evolve uniquely in Japan. SNS gaming is one of such cases. There are three SNS gaming companies in Japan, which are

1)GREE        founded in 2004, by Yoshikazu Tanaka

w/ 25M subscribers,   JPY 64.1B in revenue for 2011

2) Mobage (DeNA) founded in 1999, by Tomoko Nanba
w/ 39M  subscribers, JPY 145.7B in revenue for 2011

 

3) Mixi          founded in 1997, by Kenji Kasahara
w/ 15M (active) subscribers,   JPY 13.3B in revenue for 2011

Those three companies have grown so rapidly, doubling its revnue every year.
In particular, GREE's 3Q 2012 revenue alone exceeded the total revenue of GREE through 2011, reaching out to JPY 118.1B.

And the ingredient which enabled those SNS companies grow so rapidly is because of  the so called 'Comp. GACHA' system.

Those game companies provide card games to let the player collect the items, for instance as an adventurer in a quest something game.  About 95% users can play with no charge.  But if the player pay to collect the items, such item will help the player outdo, or make the player look more cool than other free-of-charge players.  Among those charged items, there are some really rare items that comes out randomly, which will help the player become super-strong, or super-cool.

It's like a loto. The problem is that the purchase is so easy because network carrier will invoice later with the monthly telephone charges. Therefore, it takes certain time for some heavy users to recognize how much they had to pay for to collect such rare items.  There came out so many users, mostly teenagers but even house-wives as well, who spent thousands of US dollars (actually JPY) in a month.

Then Japanese Governemnt Agency wanrned those SNS game companies that this Comp-Gacha infridges on the prohibition of Loto regurations.

Now, those SNS companies had to abondon the most profitable Gomp-Gacha system.

Some of the game development companies say they can come up with the similar system in a way that can avoid such regularions. But many believe that the growth rate of those companies have to be slow in a foreseeable future.

On the other hand, other gaming companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony whatever, is targeting SNS gamings. So the question is if those companies who lost such profitable sytem can survive in more fierce competition.

Note)
Mixi and DeNA(Mobage) are more of a Social Network company rather than a gaming company, while Mixi started gaming service since Nov. 2011 and DeNA started in 2009.
Mixi owns more sophysticated SNS platform, but their revenue still depends on the advertizement. It is obvious that whether the company suceeded to develp chargeable service, like gaming, apart from the advertizement model in early stage really differentiated later growth ratio.

Suit to become ASIMO

Just one year ago, I wrote the blog to describe the latest technology of Robot. (June 26th, 2011).

And my previous blog introduce the pet robot which is controllable through iPhone.

As such, the technology is evolving and new robots are coming out in various way.

Now Asimo is the famous robot developped by Honda,  because of its capability of two-legs-walking. But unfortunately, it is not sold in the market yet.

Then, the wearable suit that makes you look like Asimo is sold at Trendshop Japan, at a price of JPY 40,000 (about USD 400).  Is this expensive? If you compare with the price of real Asimo, it won't be.

Before you make your decision to buy this suit, here are some warnings from the manufacturer.

-Once you wear this suit, it is quite difficult to climb up or go down stairs by yourself, while real-Asimo can do these things by itself alone.

- Make sure that someone will be near you after you wear this suit, because you can not take off this suit by yourself. You definitely need a help from human to wear off the suit.

After considerations on those warnings seriously and still you think it is worth, please buy this suit. It's all your  money.

Tokyo International Toy Show -Toy Pet controlled with iPhone etc

The event was held during these 4 days at Tokyo Big Site at Ariake. This event has been held every year, and this year 2012, 14 toy companies got together and gathered 140,000 visitors. Among others, Toy Pet controlled by the iPhone was awarded grand prize. About 850 buyers from other country also came to this show, which is 14% increament from previous year.

Japan's most famous SNS Company are on Sale?

Some rumors say Mixi, the most famous SNS company is on sale now. According to the company's quarterly announcemnt, the most recent users of the service reached by 27.1 million users. Meanwhile, it also disclosed that 12.1 million users had never logged in to the account for a month. Rumor says that the founder and still 55% share holder, Mr.Kenji Kasahara, is looking for the candidates to sell his entire stake. The company was established in 1997 and started the operation of its SNS service since 2004. Now it is a public traded company at Tokyo Mother's stock exchange. After rumors has been spread, the stock price is going up. So, let's see if this rumor is true or not. Mr. Kenji Kasahara President of Mixi Corp.