As #6 of our series of the coolest mobile services in Japan, this week
we are taking a look at mobagetown.

With more than 14 million members, mobagetown was the first and still
is the leading mobile service in Japan to provide free games through a
social networking platform with avatar features.

However, mobagetown has evolved far beyond this initial concept:
Although free Flash and Java games on a social networking platform
with avatars still constitute the core of the service, it has
grown into a full-blown mobile portal with a diversified and highly
sophisticated business model. It relies on a combination of revenues
from mobile advertising, avatar-related revenues, in-game content
purchases and affiliate revenues from its portfolio of mobile commerce
partner sites.

In 2008, the site made parent company DeNA, Co., Ltd. almost US$20
per user - at above 40% operating profit, certainly a figure
that should makes most social networking services worldwide green with
envy.

Check out the video below!

Want to learn more about mobagetown? We have just published an in-depth
report that will tell you all there is to know.
Check out the details and take a look at the samples (around a quarter
of the whole report!) here:

http://www.infinita.co.jp/en/research/mobagetown_research_report_v20.html

Still not enough? We thought so. So we did the same for both Mobile
GREE and mixi Mobile, Japan’s other two leading mobile social
networking services, too:

http://www.infinita.co.jp/en/research/index.html

Thanks for tuning in!

As #5 in our ongoing series of the coolest Japanese mobile services,
this week’s program features Takutomo by Skymint Co., Ltd., a
taxi-sharing service that lets mobile users connect with people that
are going on similar routes. The service also includes a handy online
fare split calculator for figuring out who needs to pay what if you
have people getting off at different spots.

This is especially useful in a city like Tokyo where long hours
working (or drinking) often lead to people missing the last train,
which until now either meant a very steep taxi bill for that long ride
out to the suburbs, or a night in a tiny box at a capsule hotel.

Check out the video below!

As #4 of our series of the coolest mobile services in Japan, this week we’re taking a closer look at Mobile Suica, one of the two major services in the contactless mobile payments space (i.e. touch your
phone to the reader, and you’re done).

Check out the video below!

Otetsudai Networks in a location-based job finding mobile service that matches part time employees up with potential employers. Job-seekers enter their address into the site, and are shown a pool of local employers that need help *now*.

Location-based + real time + mobile = Otetsudai Networks. The service itself is not quite pretty, but the model can be extended to all kinds of industries, from employers needing help to shops having a quick sale to restaurants having a special.

Enjoy!