Kaocheki “Face Check”
Kaocheki means “Face Check,” and the Kaocheki service does just that. From your mobile phone you send in a photo, and Kaocheki will tell you what star you resemble, what fashion might suit you best, or even what Pizza Hut pizza you should order.
With over 10 million unique users since April 2007, and a variety of advertising tie-ins, Kaocheki is a fun, simple runaway hit.
Check out the video below!
We have just published a series of in-depth reports on the Japanese
mobile market, including mobagetown, mixi and GREE. Check them out at:
http://www.infinita.co.jp/en/research/index.html
Thanks for tuning in!
Except for the Takutomo and Mobile Suica, all of the apps you guys have been showing are actually extremely lame. Especially since it’s obvious you’re pitting them against the iPhone which you say crashes every hour or so. I have no idea what you’re doing to your iPhone but I haven’t heard of anyone else’s nor mine ever doing that. I’ve used several Japanese phones, my first one being Softbank’s SH 922, and quite frankly, they’re not that impressive, the apps on the iPhone are MUCH MUCH MUCH more useful and the web browsing is still unrivaled. I mean, oh wow, I kind of look like someone famous. Seriously? It’s worse than facebook. And if some fat person takes a picture to see what kind of picture he/she should order, will the phone tell him/her that he/she shouldn’t order the pizza cuz he/she’s too fat? Cuz that might actually be slightly useful. I mean, can these phones do Virtual Network Computing? Can the print labels and charge credit cards for small business orders and place orders at restaurants and places like FedEx? Can they manage your flight schedule, can they search for flights even? Are they even able to do something so simple as playing youtube? Cuz the phones I’ve played with haven’t been able to. These “apps” are ridiculously silly and by the way, even the simplest Windows Mobile (worst mobile OS ever) can do all that I just mentioned.
Daniel,
Thanks very much for your opinion and my apologies for the delayed reply.
I disagree on a few things you said - let me outline:
We have never, and were never planning to pit Japanese phones and/or services against the iPhone. We actually use (and like) both, each for specific reasons.
When I said in a previous earlier episode my iPhone froze a lot compared to my Japanese handset, this was definitely true at the time, although things have gotten better with more recent versions of the OS.
You say that many apps on the iPhone outperform ones on Japanese handsets - and I completely agree. However, as I’m sure you may have noted, what we have been covering in the “Top 10″ series are - with the exception of Suica and au Run&Walk - not apps, but mobile web-based services, and I certainly stick to the view that foreign markets can still learn a trick or two from the Japanese book here (note: not referring to full web browsing here, that’s a different story - iPhone handles this much better).
The reason we haven’t covered the iPhone much on Infinita.tv is because there is an abundance of iPhone-related analysis out there on the web in English, but the contrary is true for information on Japanese content and services, which, I can assure you, there is a very high demand for (otherwise we wouldn’t be in business).
In terms of what’s useful and what isn’t, I think this depends on at least two factors: personal preferences and context. To someone who is into mountain climbing, an ice pick is highly useful, to a swimmer, it’s completely useless. A rain coat is highly useful in India during the monsoon, much less so if you live in Egypt.
Similarly, to someone who has no interest in finding out what celebrity (or pizza - loved your sly comment on the obesity prevention issue there) they look like, Kaocheki is useless, but there are actually (a lot) of people that apparently want to know. The vast majority of succesful mobile services clearly fall into either the time-savers/productivity enhancers or time-killers/entertainment category. You seem to gravitate towards the former (as do I personally, by the way), but every user is different, and there is a market for both - actually, if you look at the Japanese market, there is much more money being made on mobile entertainment than on productivity-related services.
Another perspective to take yet is that even services that may look silly to many people can make lots of money, whether directly (say, Gree) or indirectly (Kaocheki has gathered millions of unique individual mail addresses, which is a highly monetizable asset). At least to the people who created and own these services, I’m sure they would say that’s been a very useful effect from their point of view.
Any further thoughts welcome!
Christopher