By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
-> What is the closest Western analog of their business model? There is not really any Western analog, at least nothing that reaches the scope of Rakuten. Rakuten is *not* like Amazon, and it’s *not* like Ebay either. It’s an online mall which offers a collected setting to end...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on Twitter Japan for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: The social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter is quite a phenomenon. Created four years ago in the U.S., the site quickly developed into one of the trendiest...
The answer to the question is that the mobile web is huge in Japan (90 million mobile web subscribers), and it has always been. Japanese people basically grew up using the web not on PCs but rather on cell phones. Growth began when NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier, introduced a...
The term coworking is known over here (for example, there is a Wikipedia entry in Japanese on the subject: ;), but there is definitely no scene at this point. More information and pictures on coworking spaces in Tokyo in particular can be found here: Due to space limitations and high rents, there...
Three top e-commerce entrepreneurs from Japan: 1) Hiroshi Mikitani from Rakuten (). $10 billion market cap. 2) Minoru Tanaka from Kakaku.com () $1.5 billion market cap. 3) Teruhide Sato from Netprice (;) $70 million market cap. Note: Mikitani and Sato started their e-commerce platforms by...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on the role of 3D for Japan’s electronics industry for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: The way its proponents spin it, 3D will be the next big thing not only in movie theaters, but in home electronics as well. One...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry