How GREE fits into SingTel’s plans for world domination, and vice versa

GREE, a leading mobile social gaming company in Japan, has just announced a partnership with SingTel to distribute its games in Singapore. In addition, SingTel will offer direct carrier billing for these titles. This sort of partnership is a first for GREE outside Japan.

The deal makes a lot of sense for both companies.

SingTel, as one of the largest telcos in the world, holds the key to the rest of Asia. It has 462 million mobile users as of last year, spread out across 8 countries, including Philippines, Indonesia, and Australia. It owns, or partially owns, a telco in each of these markets. Read more

Mobile social network mig33 to be pre-installed on 12 handset brands in Indonesia and India

Mobile social network mig33, with over 55 million registered members globally, has today announced that it has signed agreements for its app to be pre-installed on 12 more handset brands in India and Indonesia.

These include Skybee, TiPhone, Lexus Mobile, HT Mobile, Ktouch, SPC, Polytron, and MOVI in Indonesia; and Lemon Mobile, Beetel, Swingtel, and Zen Mobile, which join Olive Telecom, in India. The agreements are set to increase the Singapore-based company’s reach in those countries. Read more

Japan Digest: Social gaming market to double, dream-controlling app, and more

(1) The Nomura Research Institute says that Japan’s social gaming market will likely be worth 393.5 billion yen (US$5.1 billion) in fiscal year 2016, roughly doubling in size when compared with 2011.

(2) Ad agency Hakuhodo’s Future Technology Works department has come up with a new app that controls your dreams. The Yumemiru (translated as ‘see the dream’) app lets users select different scenarios to dream about. It influences your dreams while you snooze by broadcasting sounds. Read more

Japan Digest: App to curb protruding nostril hairs, Cave focuses on social games, and more

(1) Chololi lets anyone send a pre-written notification to the offending hairy culprit anonymously via their email. “For all you people who are thoughtful and in a difficult position, we give you Chololi the deputy service for notification about nostril hairs” explains the site.

(2) Following a disappointing financial report, Japanese video game maker Cave announced it will focus more on social games going forward. The company has an 18-year old history and is especially famous for its shoot’em ups aimed at a hardcore gamer audience.

(3) Golgo 13, a Japanese cult manga from the 1960s, is getting the social game treatment. DeNA announced it has launched a social “battle RPG” of the same name on Mobage for Japanese feature phones. Meanwhile, DeNA also announced that Sega has chosen Mobage to launch the online version of the super-successful (and pretty awesome) mobile RPG Kingdom Conquest. Read more

Japan Digest: MySpace Japan office will close, ChuChu playlist matchmaker, and more

(1) It’s not a big surprise: MySpace Japan will close its office early this year, according to Japanese news site IT Media. According to the report, MySpace US will manage the Japanese version starting February 1, 2012.

(2) The ChuChu (meaning kiss kiss) Tune app is a “playlist match maker” that hooks up two musically likeminded individuals. Designed to “test out the chemistry between 2 iPhone users”, the app is available in English and Japanese.

(3) DeNA announced it has entered a strategic partnership with the Alibaba group, specifically Alibaba Cloud Computing (AliCloud).

(4) GREE added yet another payment method for virtual and avatar-related items in Japan. Starting last month, players using GREE on smartphones can pay via PayPal.

(5) According to Gamebiz, the social soccer card game, Konami’s J-League Dream Eleven, has just hit one million registered players.

(6) Tokyo-based social gaming company Klab is going international. KLab Cyscorpions is the name of the subsidiary that was launched in Singapore and will handle international smartphone game development for Klab in the future. Moreover, Klab is entering the venture capital business. The company’s newly launched subsidiary Klab Ventures has announced it will establish a VC firm together with major Japanese VC SBI Investment last December. In another news, Klab has ported its soccer-themed social game Captain Tsubasa to GREE.

(7) Fired up by healthy sales numbers last quarter, Konami is continuing to churn out social games: the company announced BE-BOP-HIGHSCHOOL for Mobage on feature phones.

(8) Tecmo Koei is now counting a total of five million registered players for their social games offered on GREE, Mobage, and Yahoo Mobage.

(9) Tokyo-based Index has announced the launch of MissionGate, which is “France’s first social gaming” platform, according to the company.

(10) Facebook Japan now boasts over 6 million registered users, if you believe the newest data coming from social media analytics service Socialbakers. To be more concrete, Facebook counts 6,267,540 registered Japanese members – again, according to Socialbakers.

(11) Social games on Facebook aren’t a big topic in Japan at the moment, but Zynga Japan announced it has translated one of the parent company’s biggest hits, Empires & Allies, into Japanese.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.

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