Israel Japan | Business Guide | 2018

042 > Mobile > Sector Review Israel-Japan > Business Guide > 2018 The Japanese Mobile Landscape T he Japanese Mobile Industry is growing at a rapid pace.Themobile games segment grew by 35%,surpassing the US for three years in a row.This is especially notable while recognizing that the USA has nearly three times more smartphones than Japan.How does this happen? Japanese users access mobile apps twice as frequently,and spend twice as long on average in games.Additionally,Japanese users often rank the highest for average number of game sessions per user. The gaming industry is the largest in Japan’s local mobile market, with RPGs being the main revenue makers (accounting for 65% of mobile gaming revenues from 2016 to 2017). However,the Japanese mobile apps ecosystem doesn't end with games. Retail apps also show great success locally and overseas.While the game apps are the most significant players in the Japanese market, it is also notable that major e-Commerce companies,such as Unicorn brands Mercari and Rakuten, find both domestic and overseas markets a success. Japan offers numerous opportunities, however, the majority of publishers and agencies that succeed in this market are headquartered in Japan, while only a handful of international publishers made significant headway there. Some of the successful app developers who succeeded overseas are Gumi,who were the first ones to break into the international markets, with their great title "Brave Frontier" (which recently released its sequel – Brave Frontier 2); Cyberstep with their title "Toreba", Cocone with "Days of van Meowogh" and several more. With time, the market in Japan has opened itself to global players. Even more prominently, the global market is becoming much more open for the Japanese apps. The gaming industry is the largest in Japan’s local mobile market, with RPGs being the main revenue makers. Here is an overview of the Japanese apps ecosystem Oded Frommer, Performance Revenues CEO Historical Moments End of the 1960s: Japan Auto starts to import Subaru products to Israel, which makes Subaru one of the first Japanese cars imported into Israel.