Spotify May Need To Be More ‘Asian' To Dominate Region
Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the company’s Asian catalog was, saying that the company is working with labels here and does feature local music, but emphasized that “mainstream” (read: US-originated) music is big here, and that catalog Spotify has plenty of. But several Asian-originated competitors say that their experiences here have been quite different. Taiwan-based KKBOX was launched in the region in 2005, and is available in its home country, as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, with plans for other Asian countries, said representative, Inman Lin. “The Asian market is very fragmented in terms of (each country’s) ...
artist
asia
asia-pacific
asian
asian-originated
chinese
consumption
csl
difference
domination
experience
friction
function
hong kong
inman
japan
kkbox
krishnan
lin
majority
malaysia
million
minority
musicholic
nordic
payments
preferences
region
service
singapore
spotify
sriram
starhub
subscription
taiwan
taiwan-based
thailand
twitter
us-originated
western
western-based
Dropmysite Upgrades As It Moves Into Enterprise Market
Dropmysite has beefed up its site backup product with new features, as it pushes harder into the enterprise market. Its product now includes features like incremental backups, public key authentication and PostgreSQL database support, it said. Backups start at 10Gb for $19.99. The Singaporean company was started in September 2011. But it was a side project, Dropmyemail that suddenly became a hit online and drew more attention over to Dropmysite. The email backup service was launched in March 2012, and promised to be an easy way to dump a backup copy of your webmail from services like Gmail and Yahoo onto its servers. Three months later, the company announced it had 650,000 new users. The feature upgrade to the parent product looks like it was a natural result of the company’s focus on enterprise deals. It’s been making deals with regional telcos and hosts in a mix of reselling and investing arrangements. This has allowed its financing to reach about $1.3 million (S$1.7 million) so far, ...
acquisition
addition
arrangement
asia
attention
authentication
business
dallas
dropmyemail
dropmysite
gmail
gmo
india
indonesia
japan
japanese
mexico
million
office
orbitfiles
postgresql
service
singapore
singaporean
south america
spanish-speaking
xpress
yahoo
Reinventing Job Classifieds Shows How Much Room There Remains For Fresh Ideas
In the recent months, two new jobs sites in Asia have popped up with interesting new takes on the process of pairing jobseekers with potential employers. The stark difference between them and the likes of JobStreet and Monster highlight how much room there is for innovation in the traditional jobs classifieds scene. I’ve always found that cold calls tend to come from the most mismatched employers, and trawling through job listings on classified listings seems to throw up dismal harvests. LinkedIn caught onto this potential a couple of years ago, when the company went public and started a recruiting service. The recruitment business is now the largest contributing pillar to its revenues, which in the third quarter last year hit $252 million—up 81 percent from the corresponding quarter a year prior. As a comparison, Monster’s revenues were $250 million in its second quarter last year, but are flattening out at 2 percent growth. In Japan, Swimmy Minami founded a jobs site called BizReach.jp ...
asia
asia-pacific
bizreach
business
difference
eagles
entity
hong kong
information
innovation
japan
jobstreet
lee
linkedin
management
million
minami
morgan stanley
position
rakuten
recruitment
regionup
service
shing
singapore
subscription
swimmy
theladders
Japanese Group Buying Site Luxa Closes Series B Of $5.3M
Japanese group coupon buying site Luxa just closed its Series B funding of $5.3 million (500 million Yen) from JAFCO. The Japanese VC also backed Luxa’s Series A round in November 2010, when it put in the same amount. This brings Luxa’s total funding to $10.6 million since operations started in August 2010. Luxa is a daily-deals site like Groupon, but it positions itself towards the higher-income demographic by listing only premium items such as branded cosmetics and alcohol, and up-market restaurants. It says it has around 350,000 members in Japan. Its headquarters is in Tokyo, and it just opened offices in Nagoya and Fukuoka, to add to its second office in Osaka, which it opened last year. Its CEO and founder, Swimmy Minami is also the founder of BizReach.jp, a job site that pitches itself as a “premium” listing for workers who earn more than $70,000 per annum. Unlike other sites such as Monster.com or Jobstreet.com, users on BizReach pay for their listings while companies and ...
bizreach
business
ceo
fukuoka
groupon
jafco
japan
japanese
jobstreet
luxa
million
minami
nagoya
office
operations
osaka
position
singapore
swimmy
tokyo
unlike
Yota To Mass Produce E-ink Phone In Singapore
Russian phone maker, Yota Devices, will start making its first dual-screen e-ink YotaPhones in Singapore. The company has signed with Hi-P, a manufacturer in the country, to have it mass produce the devices. Yota’s COO, Lau Geckler, told us that he is also in Singapore to help set up Yota’s Asian sales office and the company’s second R&D facility. Its original R&D center is in Finland, and it has development teams in Russia and the US, he said. The company is now hiring mainly sales and marketing staff for Asia and in the US to add to the 55 people it has in its headquarters in Russia, which take care of software development and design. Geckler, who joined Yota last year in August, said the company has been on an aggressive hiring spree, and that the team has grown from 15 when he joined, to its current size. When I met him, he showed me the YotaPhone. The charger was hastily bound to the phone by a rubber band, and he apologized, noting that it is still in prototype form, but the ...
asia
asian
back
china
coo
development
devices
facility
finland
geckler
hi-p
hong kong
indonesia
japan
japanese
lau
location
lte
megafon
million
office
production
russia
russian
singapore
yota
yotaphone
yotaphones