Japan’s Digital Media Market and the Opportunities for Future Expansion

The digital media market in Japan is huge and expectedly booming. This is made possible by the new generation of Japanese youth who gladly accepted modern lifestyle and embraced all manners of new digital technologies for communication, socializing and business purposes. Japanese use digital media in variety of platforms: Blogs, microblogging, social networking websites, bulletin board systems (BBS)/forums, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, search engines, e-commerce etc. The invention of mobile devices and smartphones has also increased the number of digital media users in the country, a trend that is expected to grow even as 3-G and 4-G devices are mass-produced to facilitate quick access to the internet. Blogging is a popular activity in Japan; even the Washington Post has described the Japanese as “wild bloggers”. Millions of Japanese are also reportedly engaged in microblogging on their cell phones and other hand-held devices. People blog about fashion, entertainment, sports and other non-controversial topics, while shying away from discussing knotty issues like politics and religious tension. Majority of bloggers in Japan do so anonymously, and when they participate in online forums they tend to hide their identity from other users. Social media sites like Mixi, Facebook, Myspace and other less-known ones are springing up to catch Japanese users’ attention. Users are patronizing these sites to find out information about their preferred products/services; they are using them to network with friends and business associates; and a few Japanese businesses have started turning to social media websites nowadays to market their services/products and win the hearts of new customers. There is no doubt that the use of social media technology in Japan will increase in the coming years as business owners find ways to reduce the cost of marketing and advertizing using the social media avenues. As more and more Japanese people utilize e-commerce sites like Yahoo Japan, Rakuten, Amazon, etc. to purchase their goods and merchandise, this practice has definitely increased the frequency at which people used the search engines to find the products they are looking for. A survey that was conducted in 2009 revealed that Yahoo Japan remains the most popular search engine in Japan, followed by the Google sites. Similarly, Youtube has remained the most used site for video-sharing among Japanese people. This is followed by home-made video-sharing site named NicoNicoDouga, with an estimated 13 hours per view. Using the digital media for bulletin boards and forums is gaining popularity gradually, and there is every possibility that more Japanese forum-posters or forum-managers will emerge in the coming years. While all these instances point to a booming and prosperous digital media marketing in the near future, any new entrants (foreign companies, especially) into the country will have to immediately face two major obstacles:

1. Customizing their services to suit the purpose of Japanese customers who mainly prefer to interact only in Japanese language;
2. Adoption of cloud computing in order to be able to manage the bulk of data that will be generated, processed and stored in the course of operating in Japan.

While it is possible to easily localize one’s services in Japan to satisfy the requirements of Japanese customers, most foreign entrants to the Japanese digital media market will have to soon contend with the issue of creating enough storage capacity to store the large amount of electronic files, data, and digital content arising from their operations. Also, they will be required to provide a fast and reliable access to their services on a regular basis. Cloud computing offers incomparable opportunity for companies to enlarge their storage capacity as well as increase their service performance, because customers can confidently use the digital media without worrying about losing important files or having their personal information or data omitted due to the small space available for storage on some foreign companies’ servers.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.   About the Guest Author: Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/