Mobile Content/mCommerce exceeding $30B in 2013

MCF(Mobile Content Forum), a mobile industry organization announced that the entire mobile content and mCommerce market exceeded $30B in 2013.

The definition of mobile content market is digital contents such as game, music and video and the mCommerce market is the total market of commerce, services and transactions on mobile.

Mobile content market grew 27% YoY from $8.5B in 2012 to $10.7B in 2013. The key driver was games including social games which grew 115% YoY at $5.6B is over 50% of this category. However the highest growth seen in the mobile content category is video growing at 266% YoY at $0.9B. The split between feature phone and smartphone is $2.4B from feature phones declining 50% YoY and $8.3B from smartphones growing at 124% YoY.

mCommerce market grew 29% YoY from $14.9B in 2012 to $19.3B in 2013. The fastest growing was commerce growing at 39% YoY representing nearly half of the mCommerce category. Services are tickets(concerts, air, train etc.) sold through mobile devices and is the second largest in this category at $7.4B and growing 19% YoY. Transactions are services or businesses taking commission on the transaction users make such as online trading, auctions and public gambling. This area grew 26% YoY at $2.3B. Regarding the mCommerce data, these are all feature phone and smartphone combined data.

Details in Japanese; 2013 Mobile content/mCommerce market size in Japan
Details in English; 2013 Mobile content/mCommerce market size in Japan

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Consumption index going up in July - Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living

Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living released a consumption trend index report. According to this report, the consumer confidence in July went up 2.5pt from June but decreased 1.6pt YoY and the indicator is at 49.7pt. Also, the deflation index stayed fairly flat at just 0.1pt growth from June and 3.4pt decrease from last year at 61.2pt.

The consumer confidence uplift in July is a seasonal trend in Japan where many companies pay out their bonus to employees in June to July. Also, it is the beginning of summer and the demand for air-conditioners and summer apparel increases. The number of people who showed concern for the consumption tax increase has dropped significantly to just 3% from 10%.

Detailed report in PDF

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TV ad spend still growing in June - Dentsu monthly earnings

According to the monthly earnings announcement from Dentsu, TV ad spend was the only growing media within the 4 traditional media(newspaper, magazine, radio and TV) in 2 consecutive months. Also, digital media spend grew over 17% YoY in June dropping slightly from +30% YoY in May.

• Dentsu/May earnings
• Newspaper: $82M (-16% YoY)
• Magazine: $23.4M (-7% YoY)
• Radio: $11.3M (-8% YoY)
• TV: $654M (+7% YoY)
• Digital: $66.7M (+17% YoY)
• OOH: $40M (-5% YoY)
• marketing/promotion: $144M (+10.5% YoY)

 

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.

Smartphone penetration in Japan up to 53% in March 2014

According to Nikkei's article, the Japanese Ministry of Internal affairs and Communications announced on Jul. 15th that the smartphone penetration in Japan rose up to 53.5% in March 2014 however still behind the peer countries - Singapore 93%, Korea 88%, UK 80%, France 71%, US 69%.

On the other hand, Japan is top in terms of feature phone users and 28% still carry feature phones while the peer countries are rapidly shifting to smartphone - Singapore 8%, Korea 17%, UK 10%, France 9.4%, US 14%. More interestingly, people who do not carry any phone is quite high in Japan at 21% following France at 21.3%.

Find details in page 172 in the below link.

MIC 2014 White Paper Information and Communications in Japan

Inside Japan - Providing marketing data, market insights, research data for Japan market.