New AU mobile line-up goes high-tech niche

Written by: Rebecca Milner on February 10, 2009 at 10:59 pm | In DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION | No Comments

Not just a mobile phone, these new models are being marketed as lifestyle accessories to fit users’ specific lifestyle priorities.

KDDI has announced their new AU handset line-up for spring—a product range that indicates an increasing divergence from the idea of an “all-around good phone” into a wide-range collection of phones that are really advanced in one particular function from touchscreens to fashion design.

To that effect, KDDI is offering the Walkman Phone Premium3 from manufacturer Sony Ericsson that promises the best sound quality to date for those who are fans of AU’s Lismo music download service. Then there is the Wooo H001 (created by Hitachi), the world’s first mobile with a 3D image supported 3.1 inch liquid crystal screen, for those who prefer high-tech visuals.

Meanwhile the SH001 is a Sharp phone that excels at photography, with an 8 mega pixel camera loaded on board. And from Kyocera, AU is offering the K001, a phone with a colorful band and customized skin that allows the phone to function like a clutch purse—for the fashion conscious, or perhaps those who are tired of missing important phone calls trying to dig their mobiles out from the bottoms of their massive handbags.

Trend Potential

Hardware has come a long way, but not everyone needs what their phones can do, and prefer them to act as they want them to. From external design to interface and hardware functionality, there are endless ways to create phones to fit very niche markets. Find out how this can help your business by exploring this trend and more in our Trendpool database.

Tags: Customization, KDDI, Mobile
Category: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION
Other categories: MARKETING IDEAS, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Bandai, Takara Tomy get cute in the kitchen

Written by: Rebecca Milner on April 29, 2008 at 11:48 am | In LIFESTYLE / FASHION | 9 Comments

Ever since the Chuboo line of fun kitchen tools caught our eye (and CNN’s too!), we’ve been noticing what can only be described as a boom in cutesy kitchen gadgets that can be enjoyed by moms (or dads) and kids alike. Major toy companies like Bandai and Takara Tomy put out their share of toy like kitchen appliances last year and have plans in the works to release more this year.

Bandai scored big with its Cook Joy series, featuring the Norimaki Makki (available HERE), a device that helps small, uncoordinated fingers roll out near-perfect sushi rolls, and the Ichi Ni Sando (product page here) sandwich press, which makes fun shaped “sandwiches” out of bread or rice. (Product Page).

Meanwhile Takara Tomy had a hit with its Sugar Bunnies-themed Ice Cooking (¥4,200) ice cream maker last summer and now has plans to release an Onigiri (rice ball) Party (¥3,675) making kit with the same character images this June.

All of the above made from colorful plastic and are hand-controlled, electricity and oven-free, focusing on either lunch box material or after school snack foods. Of course what is particularly interesting about these products is that, in contrast to the kiddy cake baking kits popular in other countries, many of these sets teach kids to make traditional Japanese food, which makes me think maybe I should pick one up myself.

Tags: appliances, Children, Customization, food, Home, kitchen, Toys
Category: LIFESTYLE / FASHION
Other categories: MARKETING IDEAS, DIGITAL LIFE, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Eat your cute in a character lunch

Written by: Rebecca Milner on March 28, 2008 at 10:34 pm | In DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION | 6 Comments

Heart shaped cucumbers and moffles are not isolated incidents. The industry concerned with making lunches and lunch time preparation more fun is growing to meet the demands of competitive kindergarten moms determined to make sure their child is the most loved on the playground, or at least looks it.

The latest must-have are “chuboos,” a line of products designed for creating “kyara-ben” (character lunchboxes) from Kai Housewares. The series includes cutters for making character shapes (¥1,260), molds for fashioning rice into playful balls (¥840), kitchen craft knifes for sculpting veggies (3 for ¥2,100), and punches for creating emoticon-style faces out of nori seaweed (¥840 each).

A few more chuboo-made lunchboxes:

Now imagine how the kid with the plain rice feels.

Tags: Characters, Customization, food, kitchen
Category: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION
Other categories: MARKETING IDEAS, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Heart-shaped cucumbers up close

Written by: Rebecca Milner on February 29, 2008 at 8:14 pm | In LIFESTYLE / FASHION | 3 Comments

Heart-shaped cucumbers made news last summer, but I just recently found them in my local grocery story, a discovery which prompted a little more research into these strangely shaped salad staples.

As it turns out, they are grown by a co-op of nine women called Heartstick Ojaru in Chiba (a suburb of Tokyo) using plastic molds affixed to the stem of the plant, which create heart and star shapes visible when the cucumber is sliced cross-wise.

Compared to the square melons that made headlines a couple of years back, which were designed by vegetable growers to make melons easier to transport and stock, these creative cucumbers are representative of what appears to be a grass roots effort to make meal preparation a little bit more exciting for suburban housewives.

In addition to being more fun, they are also considerably cheaper. One cucumber runs only ¥105 (about 2-3 times the price of a normal one) and , as the product website demonstrates, the creative applications are endless.

Visit our…ONLINE SHOP…Buy cool and trendy gadgets & lifestyle products straight from Japan…fast, reliable and safe…delivered right to your doorstep…

Tags: Agriculture, Customization, food
Category: LIFESTYLE / FASHION
Other categories: MARKETING IDEAS, DIGITAL LIFE, PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

DecoChoco customized chocolates from the net to your door

Written by: Michael Keferl on February 24, 2008 at 9:26 pm | In DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, MARKETING IDEAS | 1 Comment

Chocolate maker Tirol may be expanding into drinks, but that doesn’t mean they’ve neglected expanding on their core business of tiny chocolates next to cash registers. This time they’ve mixed the classic schoolgirl hobby of purikura with their ubiquitous chocolates by allowing online customization and ordering with a simple interface provided by MacStyle.

The website DecoCho (Decoration Chocolate) allows users to upload up to three pictures, customize them in a digital purikura-esque fashion, and then have the results printed up on Tirol chocolate wrappers to be be delivered within 2-3 weeks.

The user-friendly interface makes creating the pictures a snap with drag-and-drop, and at about $20 for the entire process the chocolates are reasonably priced. Easy digital customization of items is a big emerging trend in Japan, starting with mobile phones and moving toward cars and even everyday objects.

Tags: chocolate, Customization, FMCG
Category: DIGITAL LIFE, LIFESTYLE / FASHION, MARKETING IDEAS
Other categories: PRODUCT INNOVATIONS