October 2nd, 2012
Japan remains to be a sturdy and voracious market for social game creators. But unlike the Western countries, Japan focuses on mobile gaming—from regular to smart phones to portable consoles. With these platforms, the social gaming in Japan grows into both a dynamic and highly competitive market and producer. The giant developers in Japan that started it all are Nintendo, Sony, Capcom, and Sega.
Decades passed and a new breed of game developers emerged and caught the interests of Japanese as innovative social games swept across the web and mobile phones. The social gaming in Japan is led by three social network media, namely, Mixi, Gree, and Mobage-town. They are accessed by consumers using their mobile phone rather than a web browser. Half of the population in Japan has social gaming as among their past time. This data is given by Pikkle developer, David Collier, who believes the Japanese market for social gaming is as huge as the American.
M-create ranking revealed that as of August 2012, Nintendo continues to dominate the local gaming market with an allocation of 70 per cent. Such figure does not constitute both the hardware and software, however. But with hardware alone, Nintendo owns 75 per cent of the market, followed by Sony with 23 per cent. Nintendo also owns the list of the top 10 bestseller consoles—five 3Ds, four Wii, and one DS.
Gree, on the other hand, shifts to feed the voraciousness of hardcore game players with a goal of bringing video game market to smartphones.
Entering the Japanese Social Gaming Market
With a promising market, it is not a wonder then, why many game developers from the United States, the Western countries, and neighboring Asia express a desire to join the competition in social gaming in Japan. In fact, there are already many foreigners who came to Japan to develop social games for the Japanese.
Translation of the game to Japanese is the foremost consideration of foreign game developers. Of course this is implied considering that while many of the Japanese speak English, almost the entire social gaming market prefers their native language. Both in history and culture, Japanese turn their backs on games with any foreign language.
Culturalization is another factor. To make the social games more attractive to gamers, game developers structure their game contents to reflect the real life scenario in Japan. This only makes sense as Japanese have been used to playing social games with streets and sceneries in Japan graphicalized on game consoles as what the pioneering game developers did from the beginning. And given the patriotism character of Japanese, there is no reason why new game developers should deviate from such culture.
Uninterrupted and smooth game experience is important as well. Imagine the scenario of hot gamers at the height of a game, only to be obstructed by bugs. Such can turn gamers off. Debugging the game is as essential as each component of a social game. Before the game is launched in the market, the same should be run-tested and reviewed for any error and incompatibility with devices.
Social game is similar to an online shop, a customer service or online banking in the sense that it should be running all throughout the day for 24 hours. Though this may not be difficult to achieve, it may have issues from time to time. Game developers understand, of course, that their servers need to be high-performance capable of accommodating hundreds, if not thousands of online gamers.
A “must” feature of a social game is the online game support accessible any time by the game users and inquiries responded upon within the 24-hour period.
Not the least of all is the social game’s promotion. Needless to say, any promotional event of a new social game requires a big capital. But with the dynamic and multifunctional social networks in Japan, the expenses for advertisement are reduced reasonably. But even if promotional campaign is of a huge cost, such investment is worth it notwithstanding that Japan’s social game market is expected to rise to $3.4 billion profits by 2012.
Japan is a leading market in technology and its perks. The high standards of Japanese in social and online game are epitomized in multi-million dollar film adaptations of Japanese epic games that awed the world.
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About the Guest Author:
Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
October 1st, 2012
In the mayhem surrounding the economic problems in Japan in 1989, the Long Term Credit Bank (LTCB) underwent a surgical transformation. Ten years had passed since the economic downturn and the bank was still lurching from one problem to another. Many felt that the end was near. Finally, in 1998, the bank was sold to an international group and this group restructured and renamed the bank and that was how the Shinsei Bank was launched in the year 2000.
LTCB’s IT infrastructure was mainframe-based and over the years, it had developed haphazardly with a number of different applications and systems supporting a number of card products that had only minor variations. The new owners were very keen to consolidate all of these into a single product, but they were very anxious that the customers of the bank did not face any further disruption to their work. While the bank could have closed all its competing cards and issued a common card to all customers, this was not an option because it would have caused a major service disruption.
The path Shinsei followed was this – each of the card type was called a business and a new IT application was created to deal with each of these businesses. Over five years, the bank transferred each of these ‘businesses’ to a common platform and application. Existing customers were slowly moved to a common hardware and operating system without ever becoming aware of it. All mainframe and legacy systems were ported and the cloud had won yet again. A full bank was ported to the cloud in small steps, with no disruption to its already fragile customer base.
Starting from this case study of the year 2000 and later, there have been thousands of such transformations. The cloud itself has evolved enormously over the years and become far more advanced and user friendly. In the second section of this article, we see how the cloud has changed over the years –
In recent years, the public cloud has become far cheaper than what it would have cost Shinsei Bank. The difference in costs between public and private clouds has increased due to the economies of scale possible in the public cloud and this difference will increase.
Security in the cloud has got a lot better and this is removing one of the major reasons to stay with a private cloud. Automatic patching and updating of cloud based systems is already making systems safer and reduces the window of opportunity available to hackers. Already experts are getting around the view that public clouds are in many cases far safer than private clouds or in-house IT setups.
Cloud systems are becoming much more compliant of various regulations that govern computing practices. This is an evolving area and as technology evolves and our understanding of security and inter-operability requirements improves, compliance issues become better defined and cloud systems are improving in their compliance with standards. Look at digital signatures – for a long time, e-commerce was held back by the lack of reliable digital signatures. This has now changed and we take these for granted. Today you can even take out a bank loan with a digital signature. As the number of subscribers to the public cloud increases, they will drive progress in the development of compliance mechanisms. Enormous computing capability and practically unlimited storage is making compliance much easier than ever before.
The low costs of cloud computing are making people develop applications privately. This is sometimes even called rogue IT. One of the best known examples is of Derek Gottfrid wanting to put all of the New York Times archives on-line. Instead of waiting for the Time’s IT set up to give him the equipment, he went ahead and set up a cloud instance and hosted the archives on it without the knowledge of the IT department. The archives came on line in a fraction of the time and the cost it would have taken otherwise.
The path shown by the Shinsei Bank in the early part of this century is now taken by thousands of businesses regularly. Cloud computing is getting more cost effective and more robust with time.
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:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
September 28th, 2012
Mobile and Internet technology have reportedly assisted the unprecedented growth of social games in Japan, as well as in other countries populated by die-hard game players. New Japanese game companies like Gree, Inc. and DeNA are dominating the social-games market with their card-battle games that allow members to actively interact and influence each other’s gaming style. This development is making previous big players and console-game manufacturers like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to reform and compete on equal footing with these dynamic newcomers.
The gaming industry is a huge one, with an estimated turnover of about $78 billion. However, the most interesting part of this issue is that the percentage taken up by mobile social games has increased tremendously from almost nothing a few years ago to about $4.36 billion a year. These statistics point to a progressive increase in this area of gaming industry, where Japan has reportedly held a leading position. Developers and companies marketing social games were, at earliest times, able to market their social games on most locally produced Japanese phones that allow graphics and game play structures. This was even before the invention of smartphones and other new generation of mobile telephony.
Seeing the possibility of becoming the leader in social games industry, Japanese gaming companies are modifying their games to meet the tastes of foreign (western) games players. Take for instance: DeNA attested that the three games on its Mobage network—namely, card-battle game “Rage of Bahamut”, role-playing game “Blood Brothers” and battle game “Ninja Royale” are reportedly staying on the Top Ten of the best downloaded games on U.S. Chart for Google Play.
Responding to an interview in the just concluded Tokyo Game Show (September 20,212), Isao Moriyasu, the Chief Executive of DeNa confidently said that “We want to build social games up into an industry where it can become the next area of global strength for Japan.” The belief is that Japan is positioning itself as a viable leader in social-games with the expectation of commanding a lion’s share of the global gaming industry.
New Japanese game companies like Gree are considering acquiring franchises from large console-game players with the hope of bringing their console games into the social games world. In the pipeline are the deals between Gree and Konami Corps for its console game “Metal Gear Solid”; Ubisoft Entertainment SA for its “Assassin’s Creed”; and Capcom Co. for its “Monster Hunter”.
Social games also offer these new Japanese gaming companies the opportunities of monetizing their offerings through the sale of virtual goods, weapons and additional powers. As a sign of good things to come, Shin Unozawa, the Chairman of the Computer Entertainment Suppliers’ Association said that “I used to think the videogame industry moved fast, but this social-game market moves three times as fast.”
This observation is also reflected in the statement of Yoshikazu Tanaka, Gree’s CEO, who believes that smartphones will eventually offer better graphics, more processing power and bigger memory than other video game devices that are currently in use. However, he might also have been considering the challenges that increased gaming activities would bring to the gaming companies’ executives, who would have to worry about dealing with increased storage, memory, security requirements.
Invariably, social game developers would have to design the appropriate mechanism for storing their clients’ games so as to provide uninterrupted gaming procedures. To achieve this, it means they have to adopt cloud computing that would offer both the developers and the players the unique chance of storing their games’ data in the cloud. This will not only guarantee uninterrupted gaming activities, it will also add value to the joy of playing social games, since players will not need to worry about losing any vital information or suddenly get bumped out of their games due to lack of adequate storage facility.
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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/
September 27th, 2012
Unlike in other Asian and Western countries, the social network sites in Japan did not commence until in 2003 with Goco as the pioneering network. A year after, Mixi came to the limelight, and was followed by MySpace in 2006, 2nd Life in 2007, then Twitter in 2008. Each of these social networks was a success one way or another. Each also shares common features and is distinguished from the rest with its unique distinctions.
Photo upload is among the primordial features of these networks, where the account owners and friends are able to view and make comments about the photos, and where everyone can connect to others through various levels of networks. There is also the community interaction. The blogging is another feat which allows account owners to express emotions and thoughts. Shout-out is a micro-version of blogging.
While at the beginning, the social media sites were only patronized mostly by teenagers and college students, the introduction of LinkedIn in 2003 created a new market—the professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporations. In Japan, the functionality of social media gears towards financial, informational, and physical gains. The social networks have become a source of useful information for job applicants, employers, and entrepreneurs.
Communication becomes an integral part of every social network. This communication feature was exemplified in the wake of catastrophes that struck Japan. These network sites were the platform of exchanging crucial information between the Japanese and agents of government for rescue operations, and between Japan and other countries for relief operations and other activities.
Facebook and Twitter Give Faces to Media Users
While only 58 per cent (based on comScore) of Internet users also use social media, the people who engage in social network activities did so anonymously. In a local survey conducted as of March 2012, the attitude in using real name today has been represented by 44 per cent in favor compared to 5 per cent a year ago.
The launch of Facebook in 2005 attracted high school students for age-relevant networking. Facebook slowly proves its worth to other markets especially the corporations and entrepreneurship, both of which realized they need to make changes in their strategies online to reach out to their liberal audience, who dare to reveal their real names in social network activities. In 2010, Facebook introduced an interface change plus an office in Tokyo.
As of March 2012, Facebook has 10 million monthly users, a figure double than in the last six months. These statistics put Facebook as the second most popular social network in Japan after Mixi with 15 million subscribers. Mixi, threatened with the progress of Facebook teamed up with Twitter. The duo has not disappointed their followers and subscribers thus far.
On the other hand, Japanese people are easily drawn to the features of Facebook and Twitter as they are able to connect to the other side of the world, and businesses reach out to their consumers more easily and quickly. Two of the popular social networks that served as a key tool for communications during the last earthquake in Japan were Facebook and Twitter.
Slow but Sure
Despite being a voracious technology consumer, Japan is a late bloomer in social networking. Japanese people are more inclined in gaming in different consoles including smart phones. A year before the country reaches a decade in engaging in social media, Japan promises a lucrative and competitive market. It breeds innovative ideas lucrative for a business for targeted markets. For example, as Japan is already saturated with mobile gaming platforms, Facebook takes advantage in providing effective tools for local business, a feature that is an instant success for local entrepreneurs. Facebook designed it that whenever someone signs up, all the largest Facebook pages appear on the “suggested pages.”
Meanwhile, Twitter, available in Japanese language two years ago, supports individualism, a characteristic of Japanese people. Best known as a micro-blogging site, Twitter provides an attractive platform for Japanese people from all walks of life.
The impact of social media from the Western world may be slowly surfacing in Japan. But not all as Japan, too, has its homegrown social media. At best, the social media in Japan will be reflective of its culture and history—rich, dynamic and colorful.
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:
Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
September 26th, 2012
A country report on the state of cloud computing in Japan makes good reading. The country comes in at First place in the BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard. This scorecard looks at accumulated points of several different aspects of cloud computing and then grades countries accordingly. The various aspects considered were legislative readiness, anti cybercrime laws, management of intellectual property rights, interoperability, international harmonization of cloud computing rules and infrastructure and statistical indicators:
Japan has an exceptionally high penetration of broadband. It is said to have one of the most complete broadband infrastructure in the world. By 2010, over 90% of Japanese homes had broadband upload exceeding connectivity at higher than 30 MBPS. It also has the highest number of fiber to the home connections and the country has a stated target of covering 100% homes with fiber giving greater than 100 MBPS connectivity. These are not merely figures, when achieved they will allow cloud computing applications in Japan that much of the developed world can only dream of.
One great example of a cloud success story in Japan is provided by the migration of the Japanese postal service to use cloud computing. The Japan post network has 244,000 post offices and is considered to be the largest bank in Japan with more than 100 million clients. Prior to 2007, it was getting bogged down with a slowing network and application and was having problems servicing its six million insurance clients and 14 billion individual posted items.
A new solution was needed. Shutting down – even temporarily – was not an option and something transformative was required. After the postal service was privatized in 2007, a decision was taken to move to the cloud. A SaaS / Paas combination was chosen with some services being purchased as they were and others being written specifically for the postal service.
All 24,000 post offices were given connectivity and an iterative model of development was followed that allowed each of these to test the new services and offer comments in real time.
This shortened the development time considerably and enabled developers to respond to feedback in real time. One after the other, services were migrated to the cloud and the entire migration – consisting of billions of records were ported to the new service within the same year.
Of course, much of the success can be attributed to the excellent infrastructure already available in the country. Cloud computing in Japan has pushed the level of service delivery to levels that are unprecedented for public offices anywhere in the world. Developers all over the world should take note.
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:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
September 25th, 2012
The early establishment of Twitter as a social media force in Japan and the meteoric rise of Facebook in the first two quarters of 2012 are two cases that should be studied in order to gain valuable insight into the Japanese market. Facebook went from having a tiny market share, barely breaking two percent, to recently overtaking the biggest local social media network Mixi with fifteen million Japanese users. For a while, this market seemed impenetrable. However, thanks to a strong marketing strategy, Facebook is on a clear upward trend and may conceivably overtake Twitter in the next year.
Culture is a big part of social media success in Japan
Japan is one of the most active countries online. While this should logically mean that social media networks like Facebook would have immediate success, the culture is such that it is easy to fail in the Japanese markets. This is because social networking is a very big deal in Japan and the Japanese social media giant Mixi seemed unstoppable only a couple of years ago. It is also important to know that sites like Mobage-Town and Gree, which combine social media networking with Japan’s love for video games, have a similarly large part of the social media network market share.
Taking a look at Twitter’s success in Japan
While domestic networks are important in Japan, Twitter became very popular early on. In fact, Japan is one of Twitter’s largest markets due to its popularity with more than eighteen million Japanese people. So, why did Twitter succeed almost immediately while Facebook stagnated? The fact is, Facebook had a time disadvantage.
When Facebook was just being founded, Mixi was already an important part of the Japanese social media market. Mixi was created as a Japanese version of Friendster, which was quickly driven out of the market by Facebook in the United States. However, in Japan Mixi thrived, along with the other social networks that are more game oriented. This was the first obstacle for Facebook, they were competing against social network companies that had years of advantage in a very particular market. Twitter entered the Japanese market back in 2008, rapidly adding Japanese language to its platform (the first non-English Twitter language, in fact), and offering a new option for social media users in Japan.
How Japan’s cultural considerations initially hindered Facebook’s advances
One of the main aspects of the main Japanese social networks is anonymity. Japan’s computer users value their online anonymity and there is a strong culture of creating online characters using pseudonyms and handles in order to stay anonymous online. Twitter also has this advantage, allowing computer users to hide their real life identity behind a user name. The main problem with Facebook is that it is geared towards interacting with friends, meaning that they need to know who you are in order to find you. Social media networks in Japan are, instead, centered around community pages that receive huge amounts of anonymous visitors. In these kinds of online locations, your own identity isn’t as important as with Facebook.
What can we learn from Facebook’s meteoric rise in Japan?
Ultimately, Facebook focused its efforts on adding features that would appeal to Japanese users. They strengthened their mobile platform, which had a huge effect on the social capabilities of this network. They also added small changes that were specific to the Japanese market. For example, blood type is important the Japanese (many Japanese people believe that you can glean a lot about a person’s personality from that person’s blood type), and Facebook in Japan added a way to share this information with your Facebook friends. While there is no question that Mixi still has more subscriptions and has a stronger mobile platform than Facebook, this social network is now competing actively against Mixi, surpassing it in PC users and in number of active users.
In short, social media success in Japan requires several elements that can work against newcomers or companies not knowledgeable about Japanese culture:
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About the Guest Author:
Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.
September 24th, 2012
Cloud computing is no longer a name associated with big IT houses. The picture has changed dramatically in the past 5 years or so. From being a technology to collaborate different business procedures, cloud computing has evolved as the best resource for start-up companies, irrespective of their geographical location. Additionally, non-IT companies have started to leverage the use of cloud computing to run their business efficiently. For example, the manufacturing sector wherein suppliers and manufactures work on a common global interface for collaboration thanks to cloud computing. But what really makes cloud computing the technology of the future is its potential to create new revolutions in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) sectors.
SMB’s are predominantly relying on the Software as a Service (Saas) model of business, which is facilitated by cloud computing in conjunction with data virtualization. The reason is the huge reduction in infrastructure costs that requires much less hardware components to be installed in the premises of an SMB unit. According to a survey report by Gartner which states that the SaaS market which attained its peak value of $3.7 Billion in 2011 is all set to increase to nearly $10.5 Billion till 2014 making it perhaps one of the biggest enterprise service growth stories in recent times.
Applications that are developed to support SaaS models are increasingly finding attraction among enterprises worldwide especially start-up companies, which look to gain the maximum advantage out of it. A recent survey report published by Techaisle stands as testimony to this growing affinity between SaaS solutions and SMB units. Going into the details of the survey, it was found that SMB’s were all in for the core business productivity tools that cloud based SaaS models had to offer. The main reason for that may be the cost of having to build such solutions by themselves.
The world economy is not good. So financial stability is something that SMB organisations need to be assured before anything else as they are likely to face a big crunch if they do not have enough financial resources. So there is a need to reduce the initial capital investments made in infrastructure and care should be observed to ensure that the business consumes and pays for only what it needs i.e. wastage of resources should be avoided at all costs.
Using cloud computing, it is possible for SMB organizations to schedule and organise the resources they actually need and they only have to pay for what they use. If they were to follow a business model of their own by investing in unique proprietary resources then chances are that several resources which are of no use for the business concerned may end up being bought along with the required resources and businesses even have to pay for them.
Recently, Microsoft sponsored a study of about 3000 Small and Medium sized business enterprises from among 13 nations. The survey conducted by research firm Edge Strategies pointed out that SMB’s are ever more willing to adopt the benefits of cloud computing and they want to maximise their profits by virtue of adopting SaaS models to reduce capital expenditure. According to 54% of the surveyed SMB units, SaaS has reduced their expenses tremendously whereas 59% of the surveyed organisations reported an increase in productivity. 69% of them agreed that they have better forecasts for their business future thanks to adopting cloud based strategies and business models.
Technical feasibility is definitely a reason why SMB’s are willing to adopt cloud computing more than any other enterprise resource management technology that we have seen before. Heads of SMB’s need not be responsible for hardware as well as software installation and maintenance as they are only using an interface, which provides them with all the necessary resources. Location independence, faster services, device independence, etc are all other key reasons why SMB’s prefer cloud-based business models today.
So now you can clearly see that it is not only Big IT enterprises that can benefit from cloud computing but also small and medium business units as well.
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About the Guest Author:
Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.
September 21st, 2012
The world as we know today is becoming more portable or in more specific terms, more mobile. A decade ago, the smartphone was a thing of future. Everyone used to see PDA’s from Sony Ericsson and Motorola as phones from the future because they revolutionised the mobile phone segment by introducing pressure-sensing touchscreens.
Today, we love smartphones, we love chatting, we love sending messages and we love being connected and cannot live without it: All of those things are brought together in the idea of a tiny device that has replaced the need of physical objects including camera, calculators, navigation units/maps, alarm clock, camcorder, calendar, flashlight, newspaper, radio etc. You might be surprised to see that this list can go longer and longer.
However, what exactly brought about the on-going mad rush in the smartphone market is still an unanswered question. Many people believe that it is due to advent of the iPhone from Apple whereas others believe that it is because of the Android OS from Google that really injected a new lease of life into the smartphone market.
Smartphones have become cheaper and they will become more affordable in the near future. They have changed the way people see portable information as well as the internet. According to comScore, three out of five US smartphone owners with ages 13 and older access social networking or blog sites. The ssage of social media platforms are on the increase thanks to the growth of smartphones and today the phrase ‘mobile social media management’ is not a new thing as it is already one of the key buzz words in the smartphone world. The smartphone is more practical and convenient for social networking than PC. The small keypad on the smartphone makes texting easy on Facebook when in for i.e. an outdoors environment especially for users.
A new study by Flurry reveals that today people spend more time on social networking websites via their smartphones as compared to gaming which was seen as the most engaging of hobbies people used to accustom themselves with via their smartphones. When compared with the same time period in 2011, the current usage has jumped by over 60%, which is encouraging for social media platforms as they can now focus on providing more mobile-friendly content and applications which are in fact great marketing and promotion opportunities. Mobile apps have changed the way we see the internet.
Today it is all about one-touch solutions and whatever service you may require in terms of software is readily available either online or offline. Both the categories together make up for the smartphone application market which is expanding by big leaps every year. Enterprises are finding huge marketing potential in smartphone applications as these apps can convey business deals, offers, services more accurately to potential customers. Location based marketing and sales is possible because of the high levels of portability smartphones offer as compared to other marketing channels.
A recent World Bank and InfoDev study puts some amazing facts about smartphone usages. According to the report, nearly 75% of the global population has access to some form of mobile telephonic communication and a good majority of this total percentage use smartphones, which increases their value immensely. Over 30 Billion mobile app downloads took place in 2011 in the combined OS category consisting of iOS, Android and Windows which are the prominent operating platforms at present globally. However there are proprietary Java based and other platform based OS available for smartphones but these 3 are the areas where all the fun and excitement always happen.
The prominence of smartphones in social media is evident from Facebook’s recent acquisition of Instagram for nearly $1 Billion. Facebook values the importance of smartphones and the impact a smartphone application like Instagram can have on its overall brand image. Applications streamline information workflow throughout mobile social media and hence facilitate easy access and modification of social media content in different social feeds such as social networks, blogs and micro blogs, online social forums and so on.
The rise in smartphone popularity has definitely changed the way we describe the terms ‘internet’ and ‘globalization’. Cheaper tariff and higher comfort coupled with strong interfaces is what makes smartphones as the device of the future.
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:
Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.
September 20th, 2012
Mobile social gaming is prouder and bigger in Japan than anywhere else in the world. This gigantic local market in Japan continues its growth with social gaming companies and platform providers generating one innovation to the next. In the last year alone, the social gaming industry in Japan has reached $3.26 billion with a predicted increase year over year. However, just this year, one of the most popular gaming mechanics called kompu gacha became a controversial topic especially for parents who pay the debt of their kids who play these games. This profit-making scheme has been banned by the government which has led to lower profits for gaming providers.
Millions of social gamers in Japan had been enticed by this gambling-like scheme as it allows them to win special virtual items by buying other items first. It lets players to have a more exciting and enhanced gaming experience. Unfortunately, many gamers have been spending way too much money on such games, including children who do not really have a clear idea on the financial consequence of playing these games. This has prompted the government to regulate this kind of social game monetization technique to address recent complaints and avoid unnecessary spending especially by naïve mobile users. The mere fact that Japanese consumers are willing to pay that much money for a mobile game presents a clear picture of how massive this industry is in this country.
Japanese mobile social gamers enjoy the convenience of having to pay through their mobile phones with carrier billing. This only encourages more of them to play their favorite games even for a higher cost. Card games though seemingly traditional in the outside realm still hold a top spot in the hearts of Japanese mobile gamers. Some of the most popular games in the local scene involve role playing and manga-related topics which have been integral to the modern culture of the Japanese people. Other top ranking games deal with the social lives of consumers such as dating and other love related activities.
Of course, with Facebook taking over the social network industry, local users also enjoy games wherein they could manage their own farms and restaurants. While Facebook has experienced a level of success in Japan, other foreign gaming companies will have to do more in order to penetrate this closed market where homegrown providers still lead such as Gree and DeNa. Both of these companies are trying to break into the international market with acquisitions and offices in other countries.
While Japanese developers can easily produce advanced graphic designs for social games, local patrons already find entertainment in fun, interactive and simple graphics which are engaging enough for them to pay and play. But while cute and interesting avatars and anime graphics capture the attention of this crowd, the core or story of the game is still the main attraction. Compared to console games, developers could find an easier time and spend fewer money when generating a social game just as long as they have the right idea. Many video game developers are even setting their sights on this more lucrative market that they can transition to.
Another factor that makes the Japanese one of the most addicted social media gamers in the world is the fact that they love to interact with other players and their friends through these mobile games. They could play against someone from another country, invite close friends to join their circle or simply chat while playing. And since many of these gaming programs are often already installed on their phones, users are even more swayed to play instantly.
Though the kompu gacha stoppage caused a little dent on the financial growth of social games for now, the market is still seen to be a strong one in the coming years. With the advent of the smartphone and eventual dying of feature phones in the market, more local players will be lured into downloading more games in their mobile phones as the technology gets even better. With 3G networks being reliable for users and more innovations in the works, there is no doubt that Japanese players will still hold a great percentage of worldwide users in the social media gaming industry.
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September 19th, 2012
MSC Malaysia is the national ICT initiative strongly supported by the Malaysian Government with the hope of turning the country into a fertile land of opportunities for both local and foreign ICT/IT firms.
Designated as an incubator for ICT companies by a bill passed by Malaysian legislators, MSC Malaysia has a huge task of creating a comfortable environment for a crop of foreign ICT/IT firms that will like to snatch up this opportunity to invest in Malaysia and expand their business operations.
One of the significant programs embarked upon by MSC Malaysia is the MSC Malaysia Cloud Computing which aims at encouraging both domestic and foreign small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in utilizing cloud computing for optimum performance and better profitability. In addition to this, Malaysia Government expects this initiative to add more high-skill technology jobs to the currently scanty workforce in the country’s ICT/IT industry.
Foreign IT firms have a lot to gain from this open-door policy: apart from enjoying the unique liberty of expanding their business operations, they can also enjoy other incentives guaranteed by the MSC Malaysia Bill, which may include tax concessions and other benefits.
Cloud computing is recognized as a force that can guarantee efficiency in the activities of Malaysian SMEs as well as a factor necessary for attaining a situation of sustained profitability. The initial expectations of the Malaysian Government are that making the country an ICT/ IT hub in South-East Asia will attract foreign players in the industry who will be able to generate jobs, promote efficiency and make significant impact on the Gross National Income through heightened economic activities. The fact is that only a few countries even in Asia operate such an open-door policy; Malaysia’s good gesture should be seen as a great chance to expand and grow, rare benefits that foreign IT firms cannot afford to miss.
For increased efficiency, cloud computing is expected to help businesses in Malaysia reduce, drastically, the cost of running, maintaining and expanding their operations. Despite the fact that widespread adoption of cloud technology may definitely lead to reduction in the size of any company’s IT personnel, such a job loss will be compensated for by the creation of new ones through business expansion and specialization. In other words, as firms in Malaysia turn over their IT infrastructure management to independent public cloud service providers, they can have enough time to strategize and develop other areas of their businesses. And, hopefully, this action will yield multiple employment opportunities which the country dearly needs in order to achieve its Digital Malaysia Initiative.
As the security and data-protection concerns about cloud computing subside due to improved cloud technology, businesses in Malaysia will be able to completely transfer their IT applications to the cloud for better performance and increased profitability.
As an English-speaking country, Malaysia offers the possibility of instant integration for firms and English-speaking investors coming from countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other English-speaking countries. Hence, once the language barrier has been eliminated, it will be possible for new entrants into Malaysia ICT/IT industry to quickly get acclimatized into the environment.
Cloud technology is, incidentally, the most appropriate choice for Malaysian ICT/IT companies if they want to achieve their Government’s plan of having industrial activities in the country digitalized for improved business operations. Cloud computing offers unparalleled scalability, which allows firms to choose their storage plan based on their present or future needs. It also allows a great deal of flexibility that the current system of computing does not guarantee nor encouraged. The most interesting aspect of this program is that any company can utilize cloud computing for greater efficiency, irrespective of their size or systems of operations. As time goes on, the cost of migrating one’s IT structures to the cloud will become expressly cheap.
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/
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