KDDI, 3rdKind tie up on smartphone apps

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KDDI Corp and 3rdKind Inc have entered a partnership to co-publish foreign smartphone apps to the Japanese Market for the KDDI au Smart Pass.

3rdKind is a Japanese company that helps overseas developers to publish smartphone games for the Japanese market by providing marketing, localization, development and “culturization” support.

KDDI invests in promising startup companies in Japan and overseas for bringing new products or services through “KDDI ∞ Labo”, a startup incubation program currently inviting a second round of applications, and trough the “KDDI Open Innovation Fund”.nIn addition to this, the partnership is aiming to bring the best apps to the beginner or advanced smartphone user in order to provide the best environment of entertainment.

The two companies have released the Japanese version of “Cross Fingers” and “Panic Flight” to au Smart Pass. From there, 1-2 games are expected to be released every month.

The au Smart Pass is an app subscription service for KDDI’s Android users: for a monthly fee of 390 yen, the service gives users unlimited access to more than 500 applications, which are selected by the carrier itself. All of these apps are free to download. The service has reached now more than 1 million users, KDDI said.