Greetings!  
Best wishes for the Festive Season!
In this newsletter read about some trends for Japan to watch in 2013, and an apology and an offer - apologies first: our online- e-commerce system for our reports is off-line over the holidays - therefore we offer all our reports (including annual subscriptions) at 50% discount, details below.
Trends to watch for 2013:
Japan's energy sector: Prime-Minister Abe announced that he will review the Fukushima nuclear accident before taking decisions on nuclear power, essentially postponing the nuclear issue. Japan's feed-in tariffs for renewable (new) energy sources are among the highest in the world, about three times higher than Germany's. While renewables (except for water power) were kept below 1% by an "untouchable" rule in the past, expect the rapid built-up of renewable sources in Japan to continue, initially mainly solar energy, and later wind, geo-thermal and other sources to follow. METI is also working on liberalization of Japan's energy markets - I would not be surprised if the election results lead to a slow-down of liberalization. (read more in our Japan-Energy-Report, outline here on slideshare).
Electronics sector: as we show in a previous newsletter and in our Electronics-Industry report (read outline on slideshare), Japan's electronic component makers overall are doing much better then Japan's electronics conglomerates, but all are in dire need of new business models. We expect winners and losers to emerge. We are impressed by Hitachi's steps towards "smart transformation". If successful, Hitachi's "smart transformation" might become a model for other Japanese electronics conglomerates to follow (watch BBC-Interview).
Telecoms: Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank, reportedly said: "I am a man- I want to be Number One", and he acquired US-Telecom operator SPRINT on his way to become global No. 1 in telecoms. While Masayoshi Son was busy negotiating with SPRINT in the US, KDDI reportedly tried to snatch Japan's No. 4 operator eAccess/eMobile away, so Masayoshi Son also acquired eAccess/eMobile on the side.
Mobile-App statistics provider AppAnnie recently announced that there is more cash revenue for Google-Play Apps in Japan than in all of the mighty USA. So if you are an App-Developer, and if you like to see good cash revenues, you better focus on Japan first and USA second ;) and 7 out of the Top-10 publishers by revenue on Google-Play apps are Korean or Japanese...
FTTH (optical fibre to the home broadband): Japan has more FTTH subscribers than all of EU + Switzerland + Norway + Iceland. EU is catching up with Japan, but Japan alone today has more FTTH broadband than all the mighty EU countries added up together. (more in our JCOMM-Report on Japan's telecom sector).
Best wishes for the Festive Season, and read about our 50% discount offer for our Japan-market reports below.
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