Tokyo-based augmented reality startup Tonchidot has raised $12 million in Series B funding from various Japanese companies, including the country’s second biggest telco KDDI, major media conglomerate Recruit, ad agency SPiRE and venture capital firms DCM, Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV), and JAFCO.
Tonchidot closed a $4 million series A funding round led by DCM and with ITV participating back in December 2008. The $16 million raised in two rounds is an impressive chunk of money in Japan’s startup scene.
Read how the mobile gaming platform will look like over on TechCrunch. → Read More
Tokyo-based augmented reality startup Tonchidot has raised $12 million in Series B funding from various Japanese companies, including the country’s second biggest telco KDDI, major media conglomerate Recruit, ad agency SPiRE and venture capital firms DCM, Itochu Technology Ventures (ITV), and JAFCO.
Tonchidot closed a $4 million series A funding round led by DCM and with ITV participating back in December 2008. The $16 million raised in two rounds is an impressive chunk of money in Japan’s startup scene. → Read More
Tokyo-based Tonchidot has come a long way since the spectacular launch of its augmented reality app Sekai Camera at TechCrunch50 back in 2008. We’ve spent quite a few articles on how the startup did since then, and the bottom line is that it did very well so far. Tonchidot is now offering up a lot more versions and features for its app (available for free on the iPhone with iOS4 support, iPad, and Android).
Here’s a quick rundown of what happened in the past few months and what more we can expect from Sekai Camera in the future. → Read More
More and more apps are stricken from the App Store as of late, for a variety of reasons. Today, the Apple hammer hit Tokyo-based Tonchidot whose augmented reality app Sekai Camera was removed without warning.
The free app, which made its – memorable – debut during TechCrunch 50 in 2008, intends to help users “tag the world” by imposing information (text, pictures, video and audio) over images in the iPhone camera. → Read More
More and more apps are stricken from the App Store as of late, for a variety of reasons. Today, the Apple hammer hit Tokyo-based Tonchidot whose augmented reality app Sekai Camera was removed without warning.
The free app, which made its – memorable – debut during TechCrunch 50 in 2008, intends to help users “tag the world” by imposing information (text, pictures, video and audio) over images in the iPhone camera. → Read More
Augmented reality is all the new buzz, I guess. I don’t know, because I only have an iPhone 3G — mine’s missing that important “S” indicating it’s the new model on which augmented reality can actually execute. But at CEATEC today I saw some Sekai Camera examples in the real world. My experience wasn’t entirely positive: find out why. → Read More
I attended the inaugural event of the AR Commons in Tokyo today, a new initiative that’s supposed to help set “standards of augmented reality as a public environment”. In other words, the symposium is an attempt to understand what augmented reality, the mixing of the real world with computer data, really is and what consequences the concept will have on the society.
And one part of the symposium was dedicated to one of TechCrunch’s favorite companies out there: Japan-based Tonchidot. CEO Takahito Iguchi, who delivered an unbelievable performance during his pitch at TechCrunch 50 (where his company was launched), presented an almost final version of Sekai Camera. → Read More
Does Android dream of Sekai Camera? The answer is yes. The augmented reality app, which was unveiled for the first time during TechCrunch 50 last September, isn’t iPhone-only anymore. Sekai Camera is supposed to make it possible for phone users to tag objects and locations in the real world by using their camera phones. → Read More
A total of 52 companies launched at last year’s TechCrunch50 conference. Five of them got jury selection prizes, there was one big winner and a very special crowd pleaser: Japan-based Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, an iPhone app that presents tagged information in the form of a graphical layer over images in the iPhone camera.
Charismatic CEO Takahito Iguchi delivered a memorable demonstration, making the audience go crazy by fending off questions of TC50 judges such as Tim O’Reilly if Sekai Camera really works with the words “Join us!” or “We have a patent!”. The reason for the skepticism: Iguchi’s on-stage show mainly centered on a pre-produced video clip, not an actual product demo. This left people wondering if Sekai Camera isn’t just vaporware for almost half a year during which it seemed like nothing happened. But today I saw the app is real and working – on an iPhone. → Read More
