Business
John Hofilena on May 24 2013
Japan, the world’s largest importers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is looking to invest and buy into Papua New Guinea’s natural gas resources, banking on the Southeast Asian nation to become one of the new serious players in LNG exports. A recent deal sees Osaka Gas Co. paying 204 million US dollars to acquire stakes in
Papua New Guinea natural gas assets owned by Australia-based Horizon Oil Ltd., as the Aussie gas and fuel company has new discoveries in the country and is mulling on building a new gas-export facility in-country.
At the Casual Connect conference on Wednesday, Junde Yu – app tracking website App Annie’s vice president for Asia-Pacific – presented some very relevant data on
Google Play’s game revenues. One of those is that Japan and Korea generate more game revenue in the Android app marketplace than the entire world combined. The data also shows that 80 percent of Google Play’s game revenues come from three countries – the United States, Japan and Korea.
In anticipation of broadcasters and TV distribution services offering ultra-high definition 4K content next year, Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers are ramping up marketing campaigns to create awareness for their own 4K television products. Digital TVs with 4K resolution offer image quality four times that of the regular high-definition images.
Business Tech & Science
John Hofilena on May 23 2013
Red-hot digital payments start-up
Square has moved outside of North America for the first time and has settled on Japan as its first overseas expansion destination. Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey – yes, that Jack Dorsey who made
Twitter – announced the digital payments outfit’s arrival in Japan at a Tokyo press event today, saying that moving to the world’s third-largest economy is a big deal for Square.
Japanese telecommunications firm
SoftBank is upping the pressure in its attempts to acquire a United States-based mobile provider, agreeing to give the U.S. government the right to approve one of the probable members of
Sprint’s board of directors should the acquisition push through. This is part of the Japanese mobile carrier’s efforts to ease national security concerns over the proposed acquisition, as the U.S. government-approved board member would serve as an assurance that a SoftBank-owned Sprint would make all efforts to keep any security agreement required by U.S. telecommunications regulators, as revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.
Going up against global social networking colossus Facebook is no easy task, as Facebook-like sites all over the world are finding out. One such Japanese
social network platform is Mixi, whom like others have struggled in keeping up with the tremendous growth of Mark Zuckerberg’s baby, seeing what is now years of stagnant user numbers and a resulting lack of direction. Just last week,
Mixi started a transition phase, as the social network’s founder Kenji Kasahara handed over the reins to new CEO Yusuke Asakura. This is immediately followed today by Mixi announcing that it has invested funding into two promising mobile-first startup companies.
NTT Docomo, Japan’s leading mobile operator, has announced its 12.7 billion yen (around 130 million US dollars) acquisition of MCV,
Guam’s foremost cable TV and Internet provider. In a move to expand its international portfolio, the deal sees the Japanese telecommunications giant acquire in full MCV Acquisition, which is the holding company behind the Pacific island’s largest cable service provider.
Business
Ida Torres on May 23 2013
The Goldman Sachs Group is set to invest around 487 million dollars in the next five years in Japan's renewable energy market. This is made due to the country's increasing demand for electricity from
solar and
wind power as it tries to decrease its reliance on nuclear energy.
Around a week ago, an investor known for radical corporate action put pressure on
Sony Corp. to sell off part of its lucrative entertainment business. A week hence, Sony has made it known that it plans to discuss hedge-fund investor Dan Loeb’s
proposal of a partial spinoff of its music and movie division with the company board.
Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency ordered
KDDI Corp., one of the country's top mobile carriers and operator of the "au" phone service, to desist from using its exaggerated advertising campaign that grossly over-estimated the coverage area of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) high-speed network for Apple’s
iPhone 5, a unit they recently added to their phone catalog.
