Japanese Maker Pro, five times bigger in this four years, … And still growing!
Japanese Maker Pro (Indie Hardware) is grown rapidly.
Switch Science sells Japanese Maker Pro Product (Indie Hardware) sales have been five times over the past four years.
Of course, Indie Hardware is sold at various DIY events in Japan besides Switch Science. It is thought that the market as a whole continues to grow.
Moreover, there is still a possibility in this market. Even numbers that are five times larger are only 0.1 percent of Indie Manga in Japan(Japanese Indie Manga Market is over 700 million doller per year). The current figure of 610,000 dollars is a small figure. But what if it is only 0.1 percent? And which is larger with Manga, hardware and market size?
Indie Hardware in Japan has endless possibilities.
If you are a MAKER and have been to Tokyo Maker Faire so far, you will know that this island is full of creative talents. Countries that produce content such as Super Mario and Dragon Ball have similarly produced Indie Products full of creativity and enthusiasm in hardware.
History, Creativity, and Enthusiasm
Pick up some of the Indie products that I have noticed. I could not really look over the whole.
SUZUKI Tetsuya made Motorola 6800 loose kit. He often made vintage computer kit, such as SBC6800, SBC6809 and others. These are 1970`s computer. ` loose kit`is hardware hackers jargon, you can see example in Mark-8 loose kit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-8.
Loose Kit is a form of an assembly kit born from the community of hardware enthusiasts in the 1970s America. Even if you buy this kit, only the PCB board will arrive, you need to buy and solder microcontroller and other parts yourself. That’s the Loose Kit.
The richness of Japanese maker scene can also be seen here. Loose Kit reminds me of handmade Apple I. In Singapore and Shenzhen, where I participated in the Maker Fair, there were no pieces of Maker scene in the 1970s.
This is an animation floating pen. A project by Japanese famous editor Satoshi Endo.
It is a simple project that does not contain any mechanism, but everyone who saw it smiles and intrigues curiosity about the mechanism.
This is a physical flick keyboard. A Japanese engineer mass-produced what was released to April Fools by Google.
He prototyped, he borrowed Fusion PCBA and Maker Space UV printer, mass-produced 30 pieces, and published in detail the details on how they promoted.https://qiita.com/junya28nya/items/3f28f7ff283c71c89730
We are Maker Pro, not a Hardware Startup
`Maker Pro` is a wider word than the Hardware Startup proposed by Seeed of Shenzhen.
Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four.
HOW TO START A STARTUP, by Paul Graham, Y combinator
Hardware startup is more than full time job.Crowdfunding, which once appeared on the extension line of hobby, became a pre-sales platform for hardware startups.
But Maker Pro is Maker’s life itself. When you put your booth to the Maker Faire, if someone keeps the booth while going to the toilet, the booth is not yours alone.
If someone brings a friend to your booth or spreads it, your project will not be yours alone. It is Maker Pro not only to make · to prototype, but also to produce and promote like that.
As living being a social being, Making is also a social activity.
If you read Naomi Wu’s contribution posted in Make: Vol 61, you will better understand that MAKER is a social entity.
We Japanese Maker goes to MAKER PRO
In recent years, the news surrounding the manufacturing industry in Japan is bad. In the past, Japan ‘s GDP momentum to overtake the United States is now only 20% of the US and 33% of the China. Probably the difference will be more open for a while now.
But as a Japanese maker I know that Maker Faire Tokyo is a place of yearning for the world’s Makers.
I know that the makers in the “hardware capital / Shenzhen” where I currently live have respected Japanese makers.
And, as I gave a number of figures at the beginning of this article, Japanese Maker Pro story has only just begun.
