Naviblog featured in key Frost & Sullivan report

Frost & Sullivan, the well-known market research firm, has featured Naviblog in its latest report on the LBS market. Released two weeks ago, the report entitled "Asia Pacific Location-based Services Markets" focuses on the tremendous growth seen by the LBS market, first in the advanced LBS markets of Japan and South Korea, but also in other up-and-coming LBS markets such as China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India among others.

According to the report, Japan and South Korea have seen a CAGR of 15 and 25% during 2006 alone, but are lagging behind smaller but more high-growth markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore which saw a staggering CAGR of nearly 30% over the same period. This confirms our belief that the potential for branded LBS services is about to break within Asia-Pacific markets and beyond to Europe and the US. For more details, and a breakdown of the report, see here.

About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, founded in 1961, has 26 global offices with more than 1500 industry consultants, market research analysts, technology analysts and economists. It is the world leader in growth consulting and the integrated areas of technology research, market research, economic research, corporate best practices, training, customer research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy.
www.frost.com

About Naviblog Corporation
Naviblog (CEO: Mandali Khalesi) is a Tokyo-based mobile marketing firm that provides branded marketing solutions to consumer brands, digital advertising agencies, and mobile operators worldwide. It is a Red Herring 100 company, with its award-winning Naviblog mobile search platform.
www.naviblog.jp

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DJ Tornado Kicks

Naviblog to present at Tokyo Mobile Innovation conference

Mobile marketing firm Naviblog will present their latest product, NaviblogX, at the 5th Innovation Challenge on June 21st, hosted by the Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium of Japan. NaviblogX is a groundbreaking web-based application that allows brands, SMEs and individuals to set up their own mobile website, complete with maps and blogs, within 60 seconds.

As opposed to most web-based APIs, NaviblogX wraps the functionality of the Naviblog API in an easy-to-use tool, requiring no prior programming or technical knowledge from the user. The finished site is immediately viewable on more than 170 handsets from all 4 Japanese mobile carriers. NaviblogX, currently only available as a restricted developer release, is being implemented by over 30 companies and developers.

Presentation details
Date: June 21st, 2007, from 2pm to 3pm
Registration: Doors open at 12:30pm; keynote seminar "Latest on Bluetooth technologies" from 1pm to 2pm.
Place: Toranomon Pastoral Hotel, New Bldg., 4F, "Mint" room
Cocktail reception: After corporate presentations, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.
Access map: See here.

About the MCPC
The Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium of Japan facilitates research and implements measures for technical and operational issues, promotes joint research and development, establishes de-facto standards, and promotes dissemination to implement and evolve a more advanced, efficient and economic mobile computing system. The consortium cooperates internationally with interested organizations, contributes to the evolution and expansion of the information society, and plays a leading role in mobile computing system efforts worldwide, especially in Asia. MCPC has excellent relations with the US-based PCCA.
http://www.mcpc-jp.org/english/

About Naviblog
Within 18 months of startup, the company develops 6 industry-first mobile services including its location-based mobile search product "Naviblog 2.0", for which Naviblog receives the Red Herring Top 100 award in Summer 2006, and is on the cover of the Red Herring magazine. Featured in dozens of publications, and receiving industry awards in both Japan and Europe in 2007, Naviblog is hailed worldwide as the next-generation in digital marketing for mobile services.
http://www.naviblog.jp/index_e.html


**Japanese**

NAVIBLOGは東京モバイルイノベーション会合に出席

モバイルマーケティングの株式会社ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧは、6月21日にモバイルコンピューティング推進コンソーシャム主催の「第5回イノベーションチャレンジ」カンファレンスに、新製品のＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸを紹介いたします。ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸは60秒以内に、ブランド、中小企業や個人のモバイルサイトを、地図とブログの機能付きで構築する、斬新なウェブアプリケーションです。

多くのウェブＡＰＩと違って、ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸはユーザにプログラミングや技術的な知識を求めることなく、ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧのＡＰＩを使いやすいツールに埋め込んであります。完成したサイトは瞬時に日本４キャリアの170機種以上の端末で確認できます。ＮＡＶＩＢＬＯＧＸは現在限定したデベロッパーリリース中であり、すでに30以上の企業と開発者に導入されています。

プレゼンテーション詳細事項
日時： 2007年6月21日、午後2時00分〜3時00分
受付： 当日12時30分〜；基調演説「Bluetooth最新技術情報」は、午後1時00分〜2時00分
場所： 虎ノ門パストラルホテル　新館４階「ミント」
レセプション： 全出席社プレゼンテーション後、午後5時30分〜7時30分
アクセス図： こちらをご確認ください。

ＭＣＰＣについて
モバイルコンピューティングシステムの本格的かつ健全な市場の形成・拡大のために、通信キャリア（ネットワーク）、コンピュータハードメーカ・ソフトメーカ、システムインテグレータ（含むサービスプロバイダー）、報道関係者等が連携し、より高度、効果的かつ経済的なモバイルコンピューティングシステム実現、発展のための技術上の課題、運用上の課題調査、課題への対応、共同研究、開発の推進、標準（デファクトスタンダード）化および普及啓発活動等を行い、もって情報化社会の発展拡大に貢献する（加えて世界—特にアジアにおけるモバイルコンピューティングシステムの先導的役割を果たす）ことを目的としています。
http://www.mcpc-jp.org/

NAVIBLOGについて
日本で初めて、携帯電話でアクセスする位置情報連動型ブログサービスを提供した会社です。設立してわずか18ヶ月で６つの業界初サービスを実現。国内外数十のメディアに注目され、06年夏に米有力紙「Red Herring」TOP100賞を受賞し、表紙に掲載。その後、日本やヨーロッパの業界賞を受賞し、次世代の携帯電話アプリケーション開発会社として国内外に注目。
http://www.naviblog.jp/

Asahi Shimbun presents Naviblog CEO

One of Japan's oldest newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, has presented the Naviblog CEO in a special feature on the exclusive Tokyo Entrepreneur's Summit that took place on Sunday March 11, 2007 at the Akasaka Prince Hotel in downtown Tokyo.

At a Summit entitled "entrepreneurs changing the world", Naviblog CEO Mandali Khalesi participated in the mobile industry roundtable, exhorting entrepreneurs-to-be to create their own mobile startup. "Official carrier service listings are finished, let the truth be told," he said. "The time is for consumer brands and SMEs to market directly to their target users using the mobile phone".

Among the 60 selected CEO speakers were prominent entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Budget travel agency HIS chairman Hideo Sawada, and Chinese search engine leader Baidu's CEO Robin Li. The event had an attendance of 4,500, including 1,500 online visitors to live video streams of the event.

Naviblog featured in The Asia Media Journal

“Mobile Branding in Japan — AMJ talks to Naviblog founder and technology visionary Mandali Khalesi about what the mobile blogging revolution means for advertisers and mobile users...”

The Asia Media Journal (Media Partners Asia, Ltd.), a leading media-focused magazine which provides exclusive analysis of companies and individuals shaping media development across Asia, has featured Naviblog Corporation in its quarterly print edition (Q1 2007), Brands on Digital.

The 2-page spread takes a look at the future of mobile marketing and branding in Asia and includes excerpts of an interview with Naviblog CEO and “technology visionary” Mandali Khalesi. “Needless to say, we’re delighted to be featured in such a respected Asian publication”, says Mandali Khalesi. “And having our photos in the article is also pretty cool.”

At Naviblog, we have been discussing and implementing projects with consumer brands and advertising agencies in order to best leverage mobile user interactions. We have found that the role our platform can play in mobile marketing and branding, is increasingly affecting not only the Asia region but also brands on a global scale. Brands and advertising agencies are beginning to see the real business potential in the mobile phone, and are discovering entirely new ways of getting a marketing message out to specific user groups.

You can purchase this special edition of The Asia Media Journal in all good bookstores across the Asia-Pacific region, and find out a bit more about how we plan to make the Naviblog platform the global standard for marketing on the mobile.

For more information on Media Partners Asia, Ltd. and The Asia Media Journal, please visit their website.

Japanese teens snub mobile carrier listings

* In a revealing market research report out last Friday on Japan's CNET news website, Japanese teens are leaving the official carrier listings in favour of mobile search when trying to find a mobile service or online resource.

The multiple-choice survey taken over a representative sample of Japanese teens in the 13-19yr age segment, showed that users prefer searching using mobile search in 70.1% of cases, as opposed to official mobile carrier listings in 47.1%. Digging a little further within the categories of services searched for using either official listings or mobile search, users favoured official listings only for news/weather and train schedules, with 71.7% and 65.6% respectively. All other categories favoured mobile search, ranging from traditional content downloads (wallpapers 78.4%, ringtones 60.5%, multimedia content 77.8%), to word-of-mouth information or specialist information (such as blogs 76%, fashion/cosmetics 58.7%, food/drink/shopping 55.4%).

At the Tokyo Entrepreneur's Summit a few weeks ago in central Tokyo, I summed up the situation in 4 words: "official listings are finished". This caused a generalized uproar among other panel members that made their money during the closed-door clique of the early i-Mode days, but let the truth be told: your days are numbered.

With the arrival of the QR mobile barcode and flat-rate mobile data plans, small-to-medium firms to boutique interest sites are moving to set up their own mobile sites and market direct to their customers. If NaviblogX can help them in their endeavour, then so be it. Even a few years ago, official sites were the only way forward to get your site out with enough critical mass to generate revenue. Now it's merely a survival-of-the-deepest-pockets exercise, where established companies throw money at established carriers to get higher up on the list. This doesn't help the industry, nor does it boost its base. While the barons play, the poor scavenge. It doesn't need to be like that anymore, and users are voting with their feet.