GREE’s Monster Quest is Number 1 Free Game in US

image from gamebiz.jp

The folks over at Gamebiz.jp pointed out yesterday evening that GREE’s (TYO:3632) new title Monster Quest, which was released just last Friday, has already reached the rank of number one free game in the US app store for iPhone and iPad. It’s also ranked sixth in Singapore and Italy, and in the top ten in many other regions including the UK and Germany.

And while this is certainly a good start for GREE’s North American studio, Monster Quest hasn’t satisfied everyone, as Pete Davison over on Inside Mobile Apps writes the following in a less-than-enthusiastic review:

GREE’s considerable skills at user acquisition, retention and monetization will doubtless ensure that Monster Quest enjoys a healthy audience at least in the short term — its various engagement and monetization strategies are tried, tested and proven. […] Ultimately, though, Monster Quest is a drab, uninteresting and eminently forgettable experience. It’s yet another title to add to the pile of mobile games attempting to put a “freemium” spin on successful, established franchises and missing the point entirely in the process.

I have yet to play Monster Quest, since it’s not available via the Japanese app store. But it will be interesting to see if the initial success of this Pokemon-style game can be sustained in markets abroad. Let’s wait and see how this plays out.

[h/t Serkan Toto for pointing out the review]

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The East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet

In a stimulating and insightful panel discussion during Day 2 of Techventure 2012, talks between technopreneurs of the East and West revealed some interesting insights into the future possibilities of creating an innovative product with a true universal appeal. The panel discussion was moderated by Kristine Lauria, Founder and CEO of Mission Street Media. Representing the...

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The East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet

In a stimulating and insightful panel discussion during Day 2 of Techventure 2012, talks between technopreneurs of the East and West revealed some interesting insights into the future possibilities of creating an innovative product with a true universal appeal. The panel discussion was moderated by Kristine Lauria, Founder and CEO of Mission Street Media. Representing the...

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Kezaar makes it easy for anyone to be a teacher

It seems that online marketplaces are all the rage in the startup scene these days. Just yesterday, I wrote about ZupaDo, a social network that connects hair stylists to potential customers. Today, I want to tell you about another one: Kezaar, a skills marketplace based in Singapore where learners can find sharers.

Startups like Kezaar all aim to do one thing very well: Make it convenient for anyone with a skill to set up a class, get students online, and collect payment. It’s especially useful for those who want to embark on a freelance teaching career, but don’t know how or aren’t willing to create their own online presence from scratch.

While we can argue that it also serves as a one-stop shop for learners — I’m not too convinced that is as important a value proposition, at least not at the initial stage. 

In return for the convenience offered to sharers, Kezaar takes a 15% cut of the fees that students pay. If teachers decide to use one of Kezaar’s 14 location partners for classes, they might have to give up a percentage of their fees to venue owners as well. Kezaar also has a charity component: teachers can opt to contribute a part of their fees to a cause highlighted by the company.

As much as Kezaar tries to brand itself differently, I do think that at this stage the differentiation between it and its cousins — like Learnemy, Evenpanda, and so on, are only skin-deep. Aside from the type of activities offered — it has around 50 classes currently — the value proposition and business model is fundamentally the same.

What matters now is execution: ensuring a top-notch customer experience, generating repeat business for sharers, securing funding, and expanding quickly into other markets without compromising on product quality.

Team experience , chemistry, and dedication matters here. On paper, Kezaar seems to have the right goods.

The company’s CEO, Debbie Lee, had a 15-year corporate career in the media industry, working at advertising agencies, broadcasters, and internet ad network DoubleClick Asia. In 2008, she ventured off to start her own marketing, business, and communications consultancy firm before launching Kezaar.

The CMO is Kriti Kapoor, who has spent 15 years in marketing and technical sales roles in the IT industry. She then co-founded Appio Labs in 2011, a Singapore-based corporate mobile app developer.

Finally, there’s ST Chua, a Malaysian serial entrepreneur who worked at Nokia, Maxis Communications, and daily deals company Rebate Networks. He has founded a ton of businesses: Perfectsen, FIRWellness Spa and Mimijumi Asia. ST helps oversee strategy at the company.

The team is joined by Alex Lam and Mihkel Must, two experienced web development hands (more about Kezaar’s team). It’s certainly a deeply knowledgeable group that knows how to scale a business.

Kezaar has a tremendous opportunity before it right now. There isn’t a dominant online skills marketplace in Asia, yet with rising education and affluence among the region’s middle class, demand for such services will continue to rise.

It is currently seeking to raise USD250k.

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Baidu Integrates Music Services, “MP3″ Becomes “Music” on Front Page

Baidu’s MP3 search has been a staple of its front-page search options for years, but yesterday evening, the company replaced “MP3″ with “Music”. It’s a minor change, but an important one because it belies the merging of Baidu’s music-related products into one unified platform which is called Baidu Music. Previously separate products like Baidu Ting, Sui Xin Ting, Baidu MP3 and Qian Qian Jing Ting have all been merged into Baidu Music.

This is not to say that the user experience has changed all that much or that those products have disappeared. You can still search for MP3s and other music, and previously separate services like Sui Xin Ting are still available, they’ve just been folded into the music platform. It’s the sort of thing many users might not even notice if they’re not paying a lot of attention. But it makes Baidu’s music branding efforts easier and expands its catalogue of music (in a way) by putting all the legally available music on its various services into one place.

With that said, the new additions and streamlining are quite welcome even if they aren’t revolutionary (frankly, I think a lot of the people who demand technology be revolutionary are forgetting what that word actually means). Having a bunch of different music services just floating around in the ether was a bit confusing, and now it’s quite clear from the get-go how to get exactly where you want from the front page whether your desire is to search for MP3s, listen to the radio, look up the lyrics to “Gangnam Style” or whatever else a music-lover’s heart might desire.

[via Sina Tech]

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ZTE Denies Layoff Plans, But Posts Huge Q3 Losses

ZTE has not been having a great month. After being accused by US lawmakers of spying (which is bad enough), it announced its projected third quarter financial results, and boy do they make for grim reading. Net profit down between 254 and 263 percent compared to last year. Losses of more than $260 million. It was the company’s worst quarter in eight years. These are the sort of statistics that scare the crap out of investors, which is why ZTE’s stock price has dropped by more than 20 percent in recent days.

These are also the kind of stats that make companies start thinking — and employees start worrying — about layoffs. Rumors have been swirling of a plan for massive layoffs involving more than ten thousand employees losing their jobs. And while ZTE was quick to deny this, there are signs that some serious belt-tightening is coming. Reports suggest ten percent of the company’s employees have already seen their salaries slashed by 20 percent. CEO Shi Lirong and other upper management folks have taken 50 percent pay cuts and promised not to raise their own pay until the company is in the black.

So what’s the reason for ZTE’s sharp slide? Being accused of being a security risk certainly hasn’t helped, but actually neither Huawei or ZTE is actually blocked from doing business in the US, and the US congressional smack talking isn’t likely to affect ZTE’s business elsewhere until there’s some hard data to back it up. Actually, the company’s mobile handsets look to be a bigger problem, as what just a few years ago was rapid growth has turned into declining sales and a huge reliance on mobile operators. A shocking 90 percent of ZTE’s phones are sold through telecom carriers, which means that when consumers are out choosing phones on their own, they’re overwhelmingly not choosing ZTE. It also means a lower profit margin than ZTE could be enjoying if it were selling lots of devices directly like Xiaomi does.

Taking its cues from that company, ZTE seems to be hoping that cheap Android handsets will save it. But it is late to that market and thus far none of its offerings have been able to make that emotional connection to consumers that successful smartphones like the Xiaomi, the iPhone, and some of Samsung’s handsets have.

ZTE has also been having trouble with its telecom equipment sales. To a greater extent than with phones, these sales are influenced by everything from the global economic climate to specific mobile carriers’ plans, and ZTE has found that especially in China — previously quite a strong market for the company — the economic slowdown in concert with the move towards 3G has resulted in lower levels of incoming investment. Again, ZTE hopes to offset this with a move towards consumer-side products that have a faster and more stable turnover rate, but whether or not its phones can attract consumers in such a crowded market remains an open question.

[Securities Daily, Investor Report, and China Industry and Commerce Times via Sina Tech, Sina Tech, and Sina Tech (respectively)]

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Folks @ Creative Mixer 4.0: ETHAN LESLIE LEONG

Award-winning mixologist and co-founder of Maison Ikkoku, Ethan created “The Jewel Of Pangaea” which listed on The Asia’s Most Expensive Cocktails and selling on the menu for S$32k a glass in Pangaea Singapore

5 quick questions with Ethan.

1. What was your journey like to become a Mixologist?

It was tough initially, and is hard for people to accept a bar which only does hand-crafted cocktails. After spending 3 yrs of developing cocktails culture in Singapore, nowadays pub crawlers are more knowledgeable about cocktails. People are asking “can you make me a good Smoked Negroni?” or “Give me a Vesper level 4!”. Singapore has carved for itself a remarkable cocktail scene in Asia now, and is booming.

2. Why did you decide this was the craft you wanted to master?

To me, making delicious drinks is like cooking with heart-when you’re passionate about it, you will deliver the best. My motivation: for no one to leave their drinks unfinished when they leave Maison Ikkoku Bar. This constantly reminds me that I must keep improving and making tastier drinks.

3. What difficulties have you faced in pursuing the mastery of your craft?

Transforming the most disgusting awful ingredients to tasty!

4. How necessary was becoming a businessman to pursue your passion for mixology as a craft?

Well, first you need the passion for the craft and to master the skills, then you need good business to maintain your passion.

5. Share one thought on creativity in your craft that others often overlook.

My thought? Break the traditional classic and create new flavour, the classic of tomorrow.

Learn more about Ethan at the next Creative Mixer.

Creative Mixer brings together creatives, hackers, entrepreneurs into a single space to redefine creativity.

The aim of the event is to encourage collaboration between entrepreneurs, developers and creatives in design, photography, film, architecture, animation/illustration and writing. The event will be attended by at least 100 opinion leaders and professionals in these industries aged 25-40.

Register here.
Registration includes food & a bottle of beer.

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Pulsk Wants to Spread More ‘Wow’ in Indonesia

Recently in Indonesia, the phrase “Do I need to say ‘wow’ or something?” has become a trend in Indonesia whenever friends relate some fact or stories. Well, the recent Sparxup winner Pulsk is looking to literally create more of those ‘wows’ with its Pinterest-like social platform. The site offers you numerous user-generated pictures categorized into different channels such as ‘technology and gadgets,’ ‘recipes & culinary,’ and ‘my Indonesia.’ We talked to Irwan Fahmy, who does business development for Pulsk, about its plans and why the name ‘Pulsk’ was chosen in the first place.

The team likes to describe Pulsk as a very easy and simple social content platform for what it calls ‘wow’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) content. The name Pulsk emerged simply because they wanted a readable five-letter domain name that makes sense from a marketing perspective. The startup created Pulsk to facilitate Indonesians’ thirst to share new things to as many people as possible, and to entertain them at the same time.

In space of only two weeks since its beta launch in mid September, Pulsk has put up the following numbers:

• 110,000 visitors with 850,000 pageviews
• There are 2,200 registered users with 2,250 items posted
• Each visitor averages 7.91 pages per visit in the space of eight minutes
• 10,000 wows

The four-man team of Rendy Bryanzah, Rizwan Raiz, Ardian Trimurti, and Irwan Fahmy plan to open an advertising platform as its monetization strategy. They’re also open to creating special badges and channels if sponsored by a brand. The team is learning the ropes regarding possible funding plans for Pulsk, and promises to launch new features and mobile apps in the future.

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Booxify Wants to Introduce Some Novelty into Your Life

The subscription box concept is hugely popular in the United States and Europe. In Singapore, familiar names focusing on beauty products such as Bellabox, VanityTrove, and Glamabox are gaining traction especially with the girls. There is also a subscription box that focuses on kids called Lollibox too. Unlike all these which specifically target certain verticals, Booxify is a new startup that aims to release different themes of boxes, such as eco, old school, and playbox, in the hope of catering to anyone and everyone.

Booxify is the brainchild conceived by co-founders Denver Lim, James Pinto, Jonathan Ng, and Eileen Wong a couple of weeks back. Denver Lim, who takes charge of marketing tells us:

We were thinking about how we could penetrate the consumer market and somehow, we just agreed that doing subscription boxes looked like a great opportunity. [It] was a great way to help brands introduce their products to consumers [and] helpful in helping upcoming local brands to reach out to our very own home audience as well.

The team firmly believes that there are other opportunities other than just featuring beauty-related subscription boxes. There will be an element of surprise for the first few boxes they are introducing, and subscribers will only know the contents of the box when they unbox it. Denver also shares that apart from obtaining goods from suppliers, they will also be creating their own products.

The Singaporean startup is looking to understand their consumers after launching their first two boxes, with its inaugural launch on November 28. It is also looking to launch an e-commerce store where they will introduce products that are unique and higher in demand. Should users fancy the products introduced in the boxes, they would be able to purchase them from the online store.

But it doesn’t just stop there for the Booxify team. Denver also tells us that they would like to give back to the community:

When the business is stable and profitable, a sum of each subscription box subscribed, will go to a special cause, namely to the physically disabled. It will be a model we hope to test and refine along the way and will look to work with the relevant organisations.

I personally like the idea of contributing to a social cause and the team’s want of getting the word out for home growth brands. I think it’s a worthy cause. However, maybe I’m just too boring, but I just don’t fancy the idea having randomly themed boxes and not knowing what to expect from them. I would honestly feel upset getting a box which contains a theme which I don’t fancy.

But for those adventurous ones out there who’d like to give our home grown startup some lovin’, you can subscribe to its boxes here.

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Newsreel [Oct 22nd]: Netflix to launch in India?

Here goes the Newsreel, our daily news roundup.

- Netflix seems to be launching soon in India including Ireland, Germany Italy, Korea and Japan among others. The company has has given indications that it is set to massively increase its international reach after the company posted a job listing seeking “experienced linguists” to help localize the move streaming service into seven new languages: Turkish, Dutch, Hindi, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese, read complete post here.

- Over the past 2 days Google shares has dropped nearly by 10%, taking away more than 24 billion dollars from the company’s value. On the onset of this dip, analyst have started predicting whether the search giant could be nearing an end soon. “Google could disappear in five to eight years and disappear in the sense that Yahoo used to be the king of search. Now, for all intents and purposes, Yahoo has disappeared,” the Daily Mail quoted Eric Jackson, the founder and managing member of Ironfire Capital, technology-focussed hedge fund, as saying. To gain more perspective, read here – Heres why Google could disappear in 5 years :pro.

- Now Incs (multinational brands) can setup multiple localized Facebook pages as Facebook has announced the new feature, called Global Pages, the feature would allow users to see localized cover photos, profile photos, page apps, milestones, “about” information, including news feed stories from pages, read complete post here.

- A PlayStation 3 firmware update at the end of this month will remove Life with PlayStation, the app that allowed PS3 owners to contribute to Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing project. Over 15 million users took part in the project, contributing a total of over 100 million computation hours. Folding@home leveraged the processing capacity of networked computers and PS3s to simulate protein folding, ultimately to help researchers study diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer, read complete post here.

- Facebook has been phasing out its ‘Questions’ feature quite silently, which allows users to poll their friends directly from a newsfeed. According to CNET, a Facebook representative has said the company is now shifting its focus to “other things”. Meanwhile, Facebook’s Questions will be accessible inside Facebook’s groups and  products pages, but it  has already begun lifting the feature from users’ news feeds.The phase out will take place over the next few, read complete post here.

- In october last week, world is likely to see some interesting products from  Apple, Microsoft and Google. While Microsoft is gearing up for the big Windows 8 and Surface tablet launches, Google recently sent out invites for its upcoming event in New York on October 29. With the tagline , ‘The Playground is Open’, details of the Google’s event have now surfaced, the search giant is expected to announce a new line of its Nexus 7 tablet, a new 10-inch Nexus tablet and the much rumoured next Nexus smartphone from LG, read complete post here

- Apple’s entry price for its upcoming smaller iPad is between the base model of the new, fifth-generation iPod touch ($299) and the currently shipping WiFi-only 16GB iPad 2 ($399). According to some sources, the base model of the smaller iPad will likely be priced at a minimum of $329 in the United States. Two higher capacities of the smaller iPad will be available in the WiFi-only configuration. These will likely be priced at $100 premiums over each other at a minimum of $429 and $529, read complete post here.

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» Newsreel [Oct 22nd]: Netflix to launch in India? @Pluggd.in.

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Will the next BBM update improve Indonesia’s mobile payments space?

RIM is hopeful that its BlackBerry Messaging service can go beyond just messaging in Indonesia, but as an e-commerce platform as well, once BlackBerry 10 launches. Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has been in town since last Thursday. Apparently, his visit in Jakarta — which contributes 8% of RIM’s revenue, the biggest country-specific share...

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Will the next BBM update improve Indonesia’s mobile payments space?

RIM is hopeful that its BlackBerry Messaging service can go beyond just messaging in Indonesia, but as an e-commerce platform as well, once BlackBerry 10 launches. Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has been in town since last Thursday. Apparently, his visit in Jakarta — which contributes 8% of RIM’s revenue, the biggest country-specific share...

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How China is Pushing Forward the Mobile Internet in 2012 [CHARTS]

In the gradual but massive shift to the mobile internet, Asia is leading the way. The continent has seen 192.5 percent growth in mobile internet traffic (pictured below) in recent years – way more than any other region. Pushing all this forward is China, with just over a billion mobile subscribers coupled with a fast-expanding middle class that’s taking Asia’s mobile web the way of smartphones and 3G connectivity.

Let’s unpack China’s role in this – from apps to mobile OS to lifestyles – with help from a new report from UCWeb [1], makers of the popular UC Browser. This infographic uses data from Statcounter. And bear in mind here that Cisco has projected (as cited by UCWeb) that Asia, with all that growth, will generate the most mobile internet traffic in the world by 2015.

To back up Cisco’s vision, this graph highlights the sheer number of people and mobiles in China in 2015 that’ll be generating all those mobile web clicks and swipes:

And, as we already know, the turning point has already been reached, with mobile internet users surpassing in number those on desktop PCs earlier this year in China:

Of course, everybody needs to be included in the mobile web so that things like m-commerce can prosper. Budget smartphones will be at the heart of that, and Chinese phone-makers have been particularly adept at making sub–1,000 RMB (US$158) and off-contract devices that are attractive and open up the whole world of Android apps:

That socioeconomic need for a fairer range of prices in smartphones has helped keep Nokia afloat in China for a while – but Nokia’s old Symbian phones are still plummeting in demand among consumers. And so China is an Android nation, with the iPhone accounting for only 7.5 percent of smartphone market share in the country at 2012 Q2 (in contrast to 34 percent for the iPhone in the US). Most of those Samsung, Lenovo, Coolpad, Huawei, and ZTE sales are Android phones:

Mind the cultural gap

So, despite the strength of China’s mobile internet, there are significant differences to look out for, especially for app developers. One we’ve often discussed on this blog is the range of third-party app stores that Chinese consumers tend to use – particularly for Android. Whereas US consumers stick to iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon (with perhaps a bit of piracy thrown in), Chinese smartphone users trawl a mixture of sources – apparently preferring that to being locked into Apple’s or Google’s overbearing ecosystem:

Other divergences to look out for in China and Asia, points out the UCWeb report, include an aversion to paid apps in many markets (not counting in Japan or South Korea), necessitating free apps with ads, or a freemium model that’s backed up by in-app purchases.

Even everyday lifestyle patterns in China and the region make the mobile web an important part of life, such as a large percentage of the populace – relative to the west – living in urban environments. That means that phones and the web become a part of commuting, with more screen time available. Also, social activities in Asia and China tend to be more communal, and so apps and the web have become integral to socializing in China too.

One final point is that – and bear in mind this comes from the makers of a web browser – but mobile browsers are more important as must-have apps to Chinese than to Americans. And so browser makers need to remember to offer up a range of content to Asian browser users as soon as they start an app, not just show a dumb blank page like Apple’s Mobile Safari, or just a bunch of bookmarks like Google’s Chrome for Android.

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1. The UCWeb mobile internet report on China and Asia, October 2012.  ↩

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