The industry enjoyed the active hot news on various topics such as hardware and infrastructures in 2013, but this year cannot go without talking about apps for smartphones. Let’s replay the year focusing on “apps”.
Game apps booming; foreign apps marching into Japanese market
As a whole market for apps in 2013, the climate was hugely active and successful attributed to game apps keeping its strong presence which was also showed in 2012.
The regular line-up of apps showed the definite strength: Puzzle and Dragons kept the position of 1st place safe and secure in rankings for each app market almost throughout the year, while LINE acquired its stable position in the market entertaining more than 300 million users worldwide. On the other hand, 2013 market newcomers made remarkable impacts with Quiz RPG The World of Mystic Wiz from Colopl marking 14 million downloads and LINE Pokopan from LINE seeing over 20 million downloads. This active market favouring game apps continues today, evidenced by the numerous TV ads broadcasted every day.
As Japanese domestic market is heated up, app market in Japan has been demonstrating its growing importance in global terms. In fact, App Annie, the US research company for app market, reported that Japanese app market had beaten US market in October replacing its position of No.1 sales in the world. Responding to that, this year’s market witnessed distinguishing movements of foreign game vendors expanding their business to Japan.
Setting aside the practical apps such as Facebook and Google Map, people who doubted the smooth success of foreign apps for the differences in tastes would not be too few. It is indeed true that, when I saw the icon of moustached barbaric figure spitting which appeared in Clash of Clans from Finnish company Supercell, I personally thought “it would be difficult in Japan”. However, companies like Supercell and King.com which is famous for Candy Crush overcame such taste differences placing their hands on success in Japanese market. They should deserve genuine respects.
Supercell was a hot topic when Softbank bought the company as well as GungHo Online Entertainment Inc. Looking at the recent news, Colopl announced the collaboration with US mobile game vendor Glu Mobile on developing games for smartphones. Growing app market seems to have been accelerating drastically the borderless cooperation between vendors.
Are “gals” back to lead the app culture?
Another characteristic app scene that pulled my attention was the fact that apps which are popular among young females have been increasing. App culture has been long led by men ever since the market was established up until now, as this can be well observed in the online games. However, the climate seems to have changed, gradually, in 2013 with women taking the position over, boosted by the increased number of users switching from feature phones in addition to the increasing popularity of LINE.
Other than LINE, the key player in changing mobile communication style for young females is the live video tool app called TwitCasting. Users of TwitCasting can broadcast videos live with a simple operation from their own smartphones. This feature appealed successfully to young generations with strong drive for transmitting and expressing themselves, quickly winning the supports from them. The most popular young women on internet are often those who “expose the real personality and identity”, as typically seen on mobile blogs. On the other hand, TwitCasting, for its “extreme style” where others can see, hear and know the transmitters’ actual voices and/or figures, was appealing as a new self-expression tool after blog, and won the way in.
One more hot topic exploding in young females’ market is so-called “flea market” application. With flea market apps, users can take the picture of an item with cameras on their smartphones and submit it immediately to the market, and/or place a bid on an item available on the market more easily than bidding at auctions. It seems such user-friendliness has won the hearts and minds of women, making this year identifiable as the year of rapidly-increasing flea market apps. Typical achievement of this trend can be found in Best Apps 2013 awarded by Google Play, where one of the flea market apps Mercari ranked in as one of the “best shopping apps”, proving the popularity of this type of apps.