Asia’s hottest tech trends of 2014 Most searched wearable

This post is part of our series that looks at the tech gadgetry and geeky moments that went truly viral in Asia in 2014. Check out google.com/2014 for lists of the most popular searches around the world. Enjoy!

No, it’s not a smartwatch, exactly. But in Japan, even kids’ toys are entering the realm of wearables. This year was all about the Yo-kai Watch (妖怪ウォッチ), a hugely popular video game and animation that is a runaway hit with Japanese kids. The way Yokai Watch works is that kids have to get a watch and collect the little fictional monsters with their watches. It’s like Pokemon, but instead of battling it out with collectible cards, you have a much niftier piece of hardware.

Yokai Watch’s search popularity in Japan even beat that of Disney’s Frozen. Is Frozen’s moment in the land of the rising sun melting away?

Yokai Watch (red line) enjoys a sustained high volume of searches; Pokemon (blue line) had a quiet year but suddenly spiked in popularity; Frozen (yellow line)’s search popularity is declining slowly.

Posted by Sakura Tominaga, Communications Manager, Google Japan

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Celebrating Asia’s present and future women techmakers

From Manila to Yangon, women like Reina Reyes and Rita Nguyen are making waves and a real difference in science and technology. Reina is a Filipina astrophysicist who, at the age of 26, astounded scientists when the team she led at Princeton University showed that Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity held true beyond our solar system. Rita, a Vietnamese-Canadian entrepreneur, has settled in Yangon, where she created MySQUAR, the first Burmese-language social-media site aimed at the country’s youth.

Reina and Rita are just two of hundreds of women across Asia who joined us at over twenty Women Techmakers events since March. Led by Google Developer Groups (GDGs), Women Techmakers celebrates women’s contributions to technological breakthroughs. On top of panel discussions, career planning workshops and networking opportunities, women at some events brought their designs and creations to life -- and had a lot of fun -- using electronic construction kits.

Women Techmakers events in Manila, Chennai, Tokyo and Zhuhai

By giving women who are interested in tech and computer science an opportunity to exchange their stories, we hope they gain strength from others and encourage more women to pursue careers in these fields.

To help more women succeed in tech, The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship supports tuition fees for undergraduates and graduates studying computer science, computer engineering, or a closely related technical field. Successful candidates will be invited to attend a Google retreat with other scholarship recipients in Asia Pacific. In 2013, we welcomed 92 scholars passionate about doing things that matter and developing technology to change the world. If you want to do the same in 2014, get your application in before May 18.

Posted by Xinmei Cai, Women@ Google APAC Tech Lead

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