Sony has begun making the PlayStation 3 in Brazil. It’s part of a move to get around big import taxes and expand to a fast-growing video game market.

Normally, Brazil charges heavy import taxes for devices such as game consoles as part of its economic policy to encourage local manufacturing. The result is that most Brazilian consumers turn to something else, like the PC, for their games.

Sony will start selling its 250GB version of the PS 3, bundled with God of War: Ascension, for R$1,099, or about $550 in U.S. dollars.

It is extremely late in the cycle for the PS3. But the move might give Sony more sales in the market in the meantime.

“Sony Computer Entertainment continues to invest in the Brazil game market as part of our long-term commitment to the country and its gamers,” said Andrew House, CEO of Sony’s game business. “Locally manufacturing PlayStation 3 in Brazil will benefit gamers, retailers, and developers. The local manufacture of PlayStation 3 is expected to infuse the Brazilian economy with approximately $300 million over the next 12 months.”

“Brazil is home to some of the most passionate gamers in the world, and we’re focused on providing them with the best entertainment experiences that can only be found on PlayStation,” said Jack Tretton, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America. “With today’s manufacturing announcement and the amazing lineup of localized games, there’s never been a better time to join the PlayStation family if you live in Brazil.”

Microsoft started making the Xb0x 360 game console in Brazil in 2011. It will be interesting to see if Sony tries to make the PlayStation 4 in Brazil as well. That next-gen console debuts in the fall. Sony said that its PS 3 game, The Last of Us, will launch in Brazil simultaneously with the worldwide launch.

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Eduson.tv launched an online business education portal geared towards people in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries to help them improve their skill sets and earn a degree.

The company describes itself as “Coursera for business students.” Students have access to a number of courses and can take them at their convenience. Lessons include videos and slides, case studies, reading materials, and tests, as well as real-life stories from business professionals. The course offerings include those led by business school professors, expert guest speakers, and free courses featuring existing content from people like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, Tony Hsieh, and Tim Draper.

Founder and CEO Daria Zimina said in a statement that there are 60 million managers in BRIC countries who need business to advance their careers, and Eduson.tv will make high-quality content accessible to them. The most popular option is a full MBA, and individual course titles include “Introduction to Strategic HR Management, Understanding the Share Purchase Agreement” and “Raising money from VCs.

Eduson is in the process of expanding the class list and adding in new features, like a networking tools. The company raised $1 million from abel invests, including the founders of Groupon Russia, although the founders are “expecting to generate revenue since day one.” Although one-third of the courses are free, others charge enrollment fees and Eduson pays royalties to the lecturers. The goal is to add one new course a week. Read the press release.

Photo credit: Screenshot

Brazil has been generating a significant amount of buzz in the venture capital and startup community recently, fueled in part by media coverage of several high profile firms “planting their flags” in the country with dedicated funds or investments. A growing awareness of the burgeoning Brazilian startup scene, and Brazil’s role as host in the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, has further elevated the country’s profile.

Is this hype justified? When discussing Brazil, comparisons to the evolution of China’s VC industry are commonplace. But what do the VCs investing in Brazilian startups really think? And how might Brazil’s VC ecosystem evolve over the next five to 10 years?

Our MBA team from the MIT Sloan School of Management recently concluded an in-depth study* of these topics sponsored by Sloan’s Global Entrepreneurship Lab program and Ideiasnet, a leading Brazilian venture capital firm.  We conducted extensive research via industry publications, online sources, and academic papers, interviewed over 20 VCs and ecosystem participants, and spent one month on-site exploring Brazil’s VC ecosystem first-hand.  Here is what we learned:

Long-term demographic & tech trends underpin investments

Brazil has a rapidly growing consumption-oriented middle class that now represents over half of the population. Approximately ~88 million users are currently online, and by 2016 broadband and 3G penetration are projected to increase by 32% and 103% respectively. Brazil’s internet users are also highly engaged: despite having only 46% of its’ population online, Brazil ranks number two worldwide in numbers of users of both Facebook and Twitter.

Put all these trends together and you get a very attractive addressable market for internet-enabled companies, with many categories yet to be claimed. While economic growth in Brazil has recently slowed, many of the VCs we spoke with believe these secular trends are sufficiently de-coupled from short-term, macro-economic cycles and that they will continue to drive the market growth necessary for startups to successfully scale.

Investors are changing & domestic GPs are sought after

While a handful of funds have been making technology investments since the 1990s, the emergence of a Brazilian VC ecosystem began in earnest only in the past several years with a significant increased activity in the last 18 to 24 months.

According to the Brazil Startup Dealbook, at least 50 firms made approximately 80 investments in startups in 2012, which marks a sharp increase over previous years.  Additionally, at least two Brazil-focused funds were formed representing ~$250M of assets under management.  (The list of firms active in Brazil is rapidly evolving, but for a good sense of the major players, we recommend checking out Joshua Kemp’s blog.)

While participants include both global-scale VCs opportunistically making investments out of global funds as well as a handful of U.S. and European VCs who have committed resources and/or dedicated funds on the ground, recent trends reveal the formation of a small but growing group of Brazilian VCs and super angels.  These local investors are often sought out as “river guides” by foreign VCs to navigate the local investment landscape and manage day-to-day contact with portfolio companies in syndicated deals. They are seen as irreplaceable complements to the sector experience and potential acquirer relationships of many global players, particularly in early-stage deals.

Focusing on fast-follow and proven business models — for now

Many of the high profile venture-backed startups in Brazil over the past few years have been consumer-oriented “fast follow” companies (e.g., Rocket Internet) capitalizing on proven business models customized for the Brazilian context, particularly e-commerce and marketplaces.

This focus made sense given the avidity of the market for these unclaimed categories and allowed the vanguard of investors to mitigate business model risk while taking on perceived “geographic risk”. However, as competitive intensity has increased many of these fast-follow sectors have become increasingly crowded and unattractive, with margins eroding and returns diminishing for investors.

As more investors become comfortable controlling for Brazil-specific risks by cutting their teeth in well-established categories, we predict a shift in focus towards uniquely Brazilian business models that may not have comparable analogs in developed markets and that will offer more defensible and lucrative investment opportunities.

The implication for aspiring entrepreneurs: Think about solving uniquely Brazilian pain points, or global pain points that have not yet been addressed.  If you are working on the “tropicalization” of a proven model, be aware the bar for funding viability is rising and that competitive intensity is making it more and more likely that only definitive category leaders will achieve exits in popular sectors.

A unique exit path

The main question on the minds of many VCs investing in Brazil is the exit path. There is limited precedent of successful exits in the country and, unlike China and India where deep(er) capital markets have provided reliable liquidity, the Brazilian BOVESPA market is seen as largely unattainable for small-cap tech startups.

This means current investors are placing their exit bets on strategic M&A, primarily driven by multi-national trade sales.  Most believe in a coming wave of such acquisition activity, and there is a lot riding on this belief.  A string of successful exits would serve as liquid fuel for the ecosystem – bolstering the gradual cultural embrace of entrepreneurship by top Brazilian talent, demonstrating returns and liquidity, and prompting more capital to enter the ecosystem.  On the other hand, a lack thereof would call the valuations of the current generation of portfolio companies into question, and the ecosystem would likely stagnate as capital stayed on the sidelines.

Tech in Brazil is tough, especially for outsiders

Before you quit your job or drop out of your prestigious university and pack your bags for Brazil, you should understand that conducting business here is not easy, especially for those unfamiliar with navigating the local context.

While the Brazilian government is a large and vocal supporter of venture capital, the traction gained by the current cohort of Brazilian tech companies and their investors has been achieved not because of the surrounding institutions and environment factors, but in spite of them.

Startups and VCs in Brazil face restrictive labor market rigidity, regulatory complexity, high taxes, and pervasive bureaucracy. Many of the VCs we spoke with felt that these structural frictions, combined with a potential “talent gap” due to a historical cultural aversion to entrepreneurship amongst top graduates (who tend to migrate towards consulting, banking, and oil and gas), make it difficult to rapidly scale businesses and manage the transition to growth-stage.

If these business environment frictions, including access to deep domestic capital markets, are not addressed, the likelihood of Brazil joining the ranks of global VC hotbeds is low.

So where does this put the future of the Brazil VC ecosystem in the next five to ten years?

Most investors we spoke with believe Brazil is in a state of fragile growth where a select group of strong businesses will emerge from the current ecosystem, capitalize on the secular technology and demographic trends to scale, and achieve exits via strategic mergers and acquisitions (or possibly international public offerings for outliers). While this will demonstrate the exit potential of the Brazilian VC market, local friction points and relatively shallow capital markets will hold Brazil back from achieving the VC industry growth profiles of China and India, and may ultimately cause investors to follow a more conservative approach towards committing capital to Brazil.

As for the authors of this study, we haven’t thrown out our Havaianas just yet — far from it. Despite the long-term uncertainty regarding the Brazilian VC ecosystem, we believe that there are big opportunities for both investors and entrepreneurs, especially beyond “fast-follow” business models. Those who can bring both relevant sector expertise as well as deep understanding of the local environment to bear will be positioned for some big wins.

* A copy of the final detailed report can be downloaded here.

Written by Hoolie Tejwani, R. Blaize Wallace, Nick Holda, and Sean Bonawitz. The authors are second-year MBA candidates at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Image credit: Shutterstock

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With most smartphone makers endlessly obsessed with high-end devices sporting bigger and better specs, Mozilla’s focus on low-end devices with Firefox OS is simply refreshing.

Today, the browser maker unveiled two developer preview phones for Firefox OS that it is offering in partnership with Spanish startup Geeksphone, which is building the phones, and Telefonica.

True to its low-end focus, Mozilla is placing the spotlight mostly on the less-powerful Keon (above). It features a small 3.5-inch screen, a 1GHz processor, 4GB of storage, and 512MB of RAM. With those specs, the Keon would barely even cut it as a cheap Android phone in the U.S. today. But in Brazil, where Mozilla is debuting Firefox OS phones later this year, it’s representative of devices that many consumers can actually afford.

On the slightly more powerful end, Geeksphone is also working on a developer preview phone called Peak (right). It sports a 4.3-inch screen, 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and a much better camera than the Keon.

These aren’t phones meant to take on the iPhone — instead, they’re aiming to get developers comfortable with Firefox OS and its complete reliance on open web standards, which is Mozilla’s big selling point for the platform. Apps for Firefox OS are built entirely in HTML5 but will have the same sort of functionality as native apps on iOS and Android. That means the apps will be easy to build, even for amateur developers.

“Developer preview phones will help make the mobile web more accessible to more people,” said Stormy Peters, the director of developer engagement at Mozilla, in a blog post today. “Developers are critical to the web and to Mozilla’s mission to make the web accessible to everyone. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide use Firefox to discover, experience, and connect to the Web — a web based on open standards and open technologies. We couldn’t have done this without web developers.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung are focusing their efforts on the U.S. and, increasingly, China, there are a few more countries that will soon demand their attention.

So says the latest data from Nielsen, which shows that Russia, Brazil, and India are quickly becoming the next battlegrounds for the smartphone makers of the world.

In India, for example, where the population is 1.2 billion, only 10 percent of the 3,900 people polled said they own smartphones. Things look roughly the same in Russia, where roughly half of those polled said they were still rocking touch screen-less devices.

Things are a bit more confusing in Brazil, a country that can’t seem to figure out what kind of phone it prefers. Thirty-six percent of phone owners there are running smartphones, while 44 percent use feature phones. (It also has a lot of owners of so-called “multimedia phones,” which feature touchscreens and QWERTY keyboards but not bona fide operating systems.)

The message to smartphone makers is clear: Start going after these countries before your competitors get there first.

Photo: McKay Savage/

Twitter is opening up a new office in Brazil, one of the social network’s largest markets behind the U.S.

The new office, located in the city of Sao Paulo, is part of Twitter’s plan to help monetize the service that’s organically attracted about 40 million active users. Brazil is the world’s sixth-largest economy, so it makes sense that Twitter would want to develop a specific plan for revenue growth in the country.

“We believe our new office in Brazil will allow us to get closer to the users and show the value of our platform,” Twitter’s new Brazil manager Guilherme Ribenboim told Reuters. “Brazil has rather mature Internet and advertisement markets. Our audience is very big and active.”

Another reason Twitter is anxious to put down some roots in Brazil? Two international sporting events are coming to the area — the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. Traditionally, these types of events set new “tweets per second” records, as Twitter has pointed out many times in the past.

Twitter is hardly the only tech company that sees potential in the region. Rival social network Facebook also has a presence in Brazil, as does online retail giant Amazon and streaming video service Netflix.

Brazil photo via Aleksandar Mijatovi/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The twists and turns in the cheap iPhone saga are enough to give you whiplash.

Reuters this morning announced that it has withdrawn a story that said Apple marketing head Phil Schiller had dismissed the idea of a cheaper iPhone. The news organization cited “substantial changes” to the report the story was based on from the Shanghai Evening News.

Update: In a new story this afternoon, Reuters points out that the Shanghai News story was changed to remove references of cheaper smartphones. The story’s headline was changed from,  ”Apple will not push a cheaper smartphone for the sake of market share,” to “Apple wants to provide the best products, will not blindly pursue market share.” Apple confirmed with Reuters that Schiller did chat with the Chinese paper, and that it contacted the paper about making the changes.

By rescinding the story, Reuters continues to fuel the rumors that we’ll see a cheaper iPhone sometime this year.

In our coverage of the Shanghai Evening News story, our own John Koetsier noted that Schiller’s comments weren’t trustworthy. Apple may not want to build a “cheap” and flimsy iPhone, but the company may well decide to make a less expensive iPhone to increase its penetration in China.

Recent reports from the Wall Street Journal and Taiwanese news site Digitimes sparked this latest wave of cheap-iPhone speculation. Apple’s cheapest iPhone at the moment is the iPhone 4, which is free with a two-year contract in the U.S. But it’s still pretty expensive off-contract, costing $450 in the U.S., $490 in China, and $750 in Brazil, according to AppleInsider.

There’s no doubt Apple will want to drive down the cost of the iPhone for markets like Latin America and China.

For more funding news as it happens, subscribe to our Deals Channel feed. You can also follow VentureBeat on Twitter, @venturebeat, to view funding news as it’s published.

Cloud Sherpas nets $40M to fuel its appetite for acquisitions

Cloud Sherpas, the brokerage services company that helps its customers take advantage of the cloud, is betting that you’ll need some expert guidance. Today, the Atlanta, Georgia-based company has raised $40 million in fresh funding. Cloud Sherpas works with customers in almost every vertical to aggregate cloud applications, and enhance the capabilities of existing software. It is showing impressive signs of traction, and projects it will pull in north of $100 million in revenues next year. The company raised $40 million in second round capital from existing investors Columbia Capital and Delta-V Capital, joined by Greenspring Associates, and Queensland Investment Corporation, one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia. Read more on VentureBeat.

VivaReal raises $15M to help people find home in Latin America

VivaReal, an online real estate marketplace for Latin America, announced a $15 million round of funding to significantly deepen its footprint on the continent. Although its major presence is in Brazil, the platform operates six separate marketplaces and listings in 20 countries. The site is comparable to other real estate sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Craigslist. The real distinguishing feature is its focus on Brazil which has a booming real estate scene at the moment. VivaReal was founded in 2007 in the US and received its first investment, of an undisclosed amount, last year. This financing came from Valiant Capital Partners, as well as Kaszek Ventures and Monashees Capital. Read more on VentureBeat.

Canada’s Business Development Bank is “bullish” about startups on the Atlantic

The Atlantic Canada Regional Venture Fund received $10 million from BDC Venture Capital, bringing its fund to almost $50 million. The ACRV funds startups from Canada’s 4 easternmost provinces. BDC is apparently “bullish” about the potential for tech in this area, particualry in the areas of IT, clear energy, and healthcare. It joins the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island as an investor. The fund will dedicate between $1 million to $5 million to each of its portfolio companies.

Dave McClure adds first German startup into his growing international portfolio

Dave McClure’s portfolio is beginning to look a lot like the It’s A Small World ride at Disneyland. This prolific investor has put $100K into Versus IO, his first entree into the German market. Germany is taking off as a entrepreneurial hub in Europe, so it is no surprise that McClure wants to have a presence in this market.Versus IO is a comparison engine based on a natural language algorithm. It culls information from around the web to present a straightforward side-by-side perspective. This brings its total amount raised to just under $1 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

TubeMogul absorbs $20M for real-time video advertising

TubeMogul snagged $20 million in its third round of financing for its platform where brands can buy video ad opportunities in real-time. The technology was “built for branding,” meaning it was designed with marketers’ needs in mind. Advertisers maintain significant control over their campaigns and receive reports about their impact. This investment was led by Northgate Capital, with participation from existing investor Trinity Ventures and Foundation Capital. Read more on VentureBeat.

Aussie startup’s NFC tech makes touching a marketing opportunity

Tapit, an Australian startup that just pulled in $2.3 million in its first institutional round of funding, is turning that need-to-touch into a marketing opportunity. The company makes chips that can be placed on physical objects like outdoor ads. Once tapped with an NFC-enabled phone, these chips open up a world of brand-specific content that matches that tag. This Series A round was led by Monash Private Capital, an investment firm based in Sydney. Read more on VentureBeat.

Brazilian ‘Warby Parker’ lays its eyes and hands on $1.6 million 

Lema21, an online retailer of designer eyewear, closed a $1.6 million round of funding. The site offers trendy frames at a set price and for each pair purchased, donates the cost to a local non-profit. To test out the specs, shoppers can use a virtual mirror on the site or opt for a try at home kit with four different sample pairs. Lema21 is set to launch in January of 2013. Social+Capital Partnership led this round, along with Brazilian eyewear exec Luis Mario Bilenky and others.

If you get $7 million in funding from Andreessen-Horowitz, then put a paragraph in funding daily

IFTTT, a service that lets anybody code commands like, “If the weather is rainy, then text my iPhone,” received $7 million in its first round of funding from Andreessen-Horowitz along with NEA and Lerer Ventures. The company plans on using the funding to simplify its service, as well as bring more ‘if this then that’ moments to mobile phones. The company also wants to let others program on top of IFTTT. For instance, Facebook could code IFTTT features right into its social products, beating users to the punch. Read more on VentureBeat.

Brazilian company iGB has launched a line of Android phones called “IPHONE” under its Gradient brand, saying it has owned the trademark for “iPhone” since receiving it in 2008 from the country’s National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI).

That’s just a few months after Android 1.0 exited beta, and about a year after Apple launched the first version of iPhone in 2007.

The first model in iGB’s iPhone line is called “Neo,” and it sports a 3.7″ screen, a 5-megapixel rear camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 2GB of memory, all running Android 2.3.4. It also offers dual-SIM capability.

In a statement, iGB says (as translated by Google):

In 2000, Gradient envisaged that there would be a technological revolution in the world of mobile phones, with the convergence of the transmission and reception of voice and data via the mobile Internet. That same year, the company filed IPHONE trademark registration INPI (National Institute of Industrial Property). On 2 January 2008, the company had its registration granted by the federal agency and now holds the exclusive rights to produce and market the brand up in 2018.

The company also said it did not use the iPhone brand immediately due to a focus on company restructuring and on “resuming business,” which implies financial troubles. Gradient is not an unknown brand in Brazil, having been the first to launch CDs, DVDs, and having other interests in TVs and video games, according to the company’s statement, and it currently carries a pretty significant array of consumer technology products.

But it’s pretty clear what’s going on here.

Either this is an attempt to generate publicity via controversy, or it’s an attempt to jack a few tens of millions of dollars from Apple for the rights to the name it popularized.

Or, very likely, both.

The technology market in Latin America, and particularly Brazil, is heating up. In the past six months alone, Redpoint e.ventures dedicated a $130 million fund to the region, Pepsi launched an incubator program for Brazilian entrepreneurs, Intel Capital made its third investment in a Brazilian fashion startup, and Realtime secured a whopping $100 million.

Dafiti is the largest online fashion retailer in Brazil. Similar to Zappos, it sells clothing, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and and home wares, and offers perks like free shipping and returns. The platform has grown fast, responding to Latin America’s fierce appetite for e-commerce options. Available in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, Dafiti offers more than 80,000 products spanning 700 brands. Its workforce is 1,200 strong.

Dafiti was built with backing from Berlin incubator Rocket Internet. JP Morgan invested $45 million in August, shortly after putting its money into the European retail empire Zalando. This fourth round of funding for Dafiti was led by Quadrant Capital Advisors, which committed $32 million. AB Kennevik, Summit Partners, and other investors scooped up the remainder.

With this investment, Dafiti will continue its expansion around Latin America and enter new markets.

Brazilians are becoming more and more enthralled with games, but they don’t always pay. That’s a contradiction that is common in emerging markets where free-to-play mobile and social games are taking off.

Brazil is both a fast-growing economy and a place where it isn’t easy to get your hands on game hardware, especially game consoles that are taxed heavily because they aren’t locally manufactured.

Brazil is one of the fastest-growing markets for social games in the world, and the overall market is $2 billion a year, according to market researcher Newzoo’s estimate in 2011. It has millions of active gamers and billions of page views, according to UOL BoaCompra, a gaming monetization firm that is part of UOL, which is like the AOL of Brazil. The gaming data is based on UOL BoaCompra’s first large survey of more than 18,000 gamers.

Brazil has more than 35 million active gamers (out of a population of 196 million), and they spend about 64 million hours per day playing games, Newzoo says. The number is expected to grow to 52 million social gamers by 2014. UOL BoaCompra has more than 1.2 billion monthly game-related page views, and UOL has more than 70 percent of Brazil’s Internet users (about 55 percent of the population can access the web). By 2014, Brazil’s social gaming market is expected to hit $238 million, according to market analyst SuperData.

“The number of gamers is about the same level as you see in Germany,” Julian Migura, the director of international business development at UOL BoaCompra, told GamesBeat. “But in terms of money, Brazil’s gamers spend more money than all of Latin America.”

Migura said that Android is just starting to take hold in the market, and Apple’s iPhones are still “ridiculously overpriced” because of the import tax. Nevertheless, Brazilians have taken to mobile apps and games in a big way. Of those who play mobile games, about 48 percent play only free games. And 45 percent regularly download game apps. About 21 percent of the game downloads are illegal apps.

The survey showed about 23 percent of Brazilian Internet users play games regularly. About 31 percent of all men in Brazil are gamers. The computer gamers are much older than typical console gamers, where the average age is 19. PC gamers have more disposable income, and they’ve moved into online, social, and mobile games.

About 67 percent of players play games on consoles. About 42 percent play on PCs. Some 16 percent play on mobile devices. Seven percent play on portable gaming devices. And only 1 percent play on tablets. About 64 percent of Brazilian Internet users are on social networks, and 76 percent of them play social games on the networks.

Console gaming suffers from high piracy rates. The PlayStation 2 game console is still overpriced, with the import taxes, at $250. But that’s down from its introduction price of $1,000. A single game could cost $120 after the tax is applied. By contrast, apps sold electronically are not taxed heavily since they are considered software.

The most popular games include new titles such as League of Legends, a game that is also popular in the West and Asia. As the chart at the top shows, the most popular genre is action/adventure games, played by 31 percent of gamers. About 23 percent of gamers play soccer, and 10 percent play car-racing games.

But the popular games are a mix of old and new. Console and PC games play older titles because that is what their hardware can run. But online and mobile gamers can play a lot of the most popular titles worldwide, said Migura.

“Brazil is catching up,” he said.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Having a big brand behind your startup can do a lot for a company’s name. Pepsi — one of the biggest names in the world — launched an incubator in Brazil today, helping local entrepreneurs create companies, while using their sprightly teams for PepsiCo-brand marketing projects.

The incubator program is called PepsiCo10 and will accept business proposals from students to businessmen who provide “emerging technologies that can be applied to brands to engage consumers in new ways to help drive sales.” The program was originally launched in 2010 in the United States and was later expanded into the United Kingdom and broader Europe.

If you’re interested in submitting your business idea, fill out the form here. The last day to apply is October 27, after which a number of judges will review the submissions through December and choose the first five companies to join the incubator. From there, the five startups will work with a PepsiCo brand, such as Doritos or Gatorade, on a marketing project. A second phase involving the same process will determine the last five companies to be admitted into the program. All those chosen will receive an all-expenses paid trip to New York City for some networking time.

PepsiCo isn’t the only one giving love to the South American country. A number of venture capitalists have also taken interest in Brazil. Well-known venture firms such as Sequoia Capital already have funds dedicated to the country. Redpoint e.ventures recently announced that it too would launch its own fund targeted at Brazilian startups. The $130 million fund focuses on early-stage companies. Co-founder Mathias Schilling told VentureBeat at the time that Redpoint e.ventures is particularly interested in commerce companies in Brazil.

The PepsiCo incubator is particularly interested in the sustainability, entertainment, mobile, and retail industries.

DEMO, the product launch conference co-produced by VentureBeat, announced last year that it was holding a conference for burgeoning companies in Brazil as well.

Brazil face image via Shutterstock

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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In a telling move that comes less than a week after the announcement of an investment in rapidly expanding European online retail giant Zalando, JP Morgan is clearly eager to up its stakes in the e-commerce industry globally and has recognized the potential of the Brazilian Internet market.

They’re not the only investors who are taking note of Brazil’s growth. Just a month ago Redpoint E.ventures raised $130 million in funds to be invested in Internet startups in Brazil. There, e-commerce in particular is on the rise, with the burgeoning Brazilian middle-class turning to the convenience of online shopping.

Similarly to Zalando, Rocket Internet’s European-focused e-commerce retailer, Dafiti offers customer perks such as free shipping and returns within 30 days, along with the option for customers to suggest clothing they’d like on the site.

Rocket Internet’s involvement in a company usually means extremely aggressive growth, which so far seems to be paying off for the Brazilians. In the year since Dafiti’s launch in 2011, the e-commerce site has grown from a team of ten to a 1,000-strong workforce, distributing over 60,000 products and getting 30 million website visits per month.

Dafiti founder Philipp Povel appears confident that this is just the beginning of the e-commerce website’s success. He told Reuters, “Brazil is still a huge country whose online potential needs to be tapped, and we are very well prepared to do that.”

The company said it would also use the new cash to “expand our presence in other countries in Latin America, namely Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Columbia.”

This story originally appeared on VentureVillage, one of VentureBeat’s syndication partners.

This is Intel Capital’s third investment in a Brazilian fashion startup this year.

ELike is the development company behind My Shopping, a Facebook application that lets retailers operate virtual stores. It helps merchants market and sell their products on Facebook, as well as connect with consumers.

On My Shopping, dozens of brands are aggregated onto one platform. Customers can peruse the store, create shopping carts and wish lists, and make purchases. They can also like and share their activity with friends, receive promotions, and make recommendations.

In brief, My Shopping brings together social media with e-commerce.

While many American businesses are operating in this space, My Shopping operates solely in Brazil with Brazilian brands. The company seeks to capitalize on the country’s growing popularity of social media networks and online shopping, as well as on the country’s emerging technology scene. It already has more than 70,000 users.

In February, Intel Capital put money towards two Brazilian fashion e-commerce sites, Coquelux and Fashion.me. Clearly, the team believes this market is about to explode. Or someone at the firm has a deep and abiding love for Brazilian style. Whatever the case, the fad of investing in fashion e-commerce is going global, and Brazil could be the next big hub for style startups.

Other investors are beginning to take notice of Brazil’s burgeoning market as well. In the past month alone, VC firm Redpoint eVentures established the first ever dedicated fund to the region, and Brazilian company Realtime raised $100M from a local venture firm.

Intel Capital dedicates over half of its funds to companies outside of North America and over the years has made 25 investments in Brazil. With this funding, ELike will strive to add more brands to its platform and develop resources to help them get the most out of their social media presence.

ELike was founded in 2011 by Flavio Berman, Tatiana Albuquerque, and Raphael Lassance in Rio de Janeiro.

The integration is intended to emphasize e.ventures‘ global presence and make it easier for portfolio companies to operate internationally. Redpoint e.ventures will use the money to continue supporting Brazilian startups and help entrepreneurs across Latin America build e-commerce, mobile, media, and cloud service companies.

“In Brazil, we are focusing on commerce because we can see a lot of pent up demand, and we are focusing on mobile because data pricing is coming down, said cofounder Mathias Schilling in an interview with VentureBeat.

Redpoint e.ventures will offer investment to promising startups beginning at the seed round and continuing through the first and second rounds of institutional investment. It will also leverage its global portfolio to optimize the success of its member companies. For example, e.ventures purchased a Chinese company with a billion dollar market cap, but built the company in Brazil because it was more efficient.

In addition to worldwide connections, Brazilian startups will also benefit from Redpoint e.ventures’ expertise. While Brazil has a major emerging technology market, there are few investor options between small, local funds and firms based thousands of miles away. Redpoint e.ventures strives to bridge this gap and bring the benefits of a top tier VC firm to Latin America.

The fund will be managed by founding partners of Redpoint e.ventures Yann de Vries and Anderson Thees, both Brazilian investors with Ivy League credentials and Silicon Valley experience. It already includes five active investments:  travel company Viajanet; consumer investment platform Grupo Xango; social media marketing service 55Social; monthly shoe subscription service Shoes4you, and jewelry site Sophie & Juliete.

This announcement comes about four months after Redpoint and e.ventures announced the formation of the joint firm. Both Redpoint and e.ventures are based in the Bay Area and have been investing in technology companies for around 15 years. The Sao Paulo fund is the most recent addition to e.ventures’ roster of nine.

E.ventures has dedicated funds in the US, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Brazil, with local investment teams on the ground all over the world. The firm focuses on early-stage startups. With the unification, portfolio companies will be able to access financial and technological resources from all over the world, as well as see increased opportunities for international growth.

“The world has really become flat when it comes to entrepreneurship,” said cofounder Mathias Schilling in an interview with VentureBeat. “Before, China, Brazil, and Russia were standalone markets. With our global platform, it brings incredible synergies and benefits for the funds as well as the entrepreneurs. We can bring our companies to a global scale overnight and effect multi-city partnerships.”

While each market is different, these differences can be leveraged to complement each other. For example, a Russian engineering company may be able to implement its product faster in Brazil’s booming e-commerce scene, or a Chinese gaming company could generate greater revenue by distributing in Japan, where monetization is stronger.

BV Capital has invested in companies such as Groupon, Angie’s List, Shopping.com, and Sonos. Since 1997, it has invested nine funds totaling over $750 million in capital. It is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Berlin, Hamburg, Beijing, Tokyo, and most recently, Sao Paulo. Read more on VentureBeat.

Facebook is constantly absorbing our real-life data that we contribute to the social network, but one Brazilian clothing store is taking Facebook’s data and throwing it back into the physical world.

The store, C&A, is putting “real-time Likes” counters on its hangers in retail locations around Brazil. The Like data is taken from C&A’s Facebook page, where the company has listed its various wares for people to interact with. When a person Likes an item, that Like shows up on the hanger. It is meant to help customers with purchasing decisions. If they are unsure of one item, they can see how many people online think the product is a good buy.

The problem is, so much of online shopping is based on a picture. An image online says nothing about the fit, fabric, or quality of the clothing. If you’ve got a poorly made, ill-fitting shirt, you’re probably not going to be swayed into buying the piece just because it has 482 likes on Facebook. Similarly, if the item has only two likes, but makes you look like you’ve done nothing but get massaged on a beach in Bora Bora, you’re probably going to buy it regardless of its online popularity.

The Verge notes that C&A is not doing well in its European establishments, but hopes the Facebook integration in its Brazil stores will help it keep up with the times. It’s a funny way to integrate social, but it shows how stores are finding new opportunities to use Facebook’s data in marketing outside of the digital world.

via The Verge; image via C&A’s Facebook Page

Apple customers who want to see more of a product before they buy online may get that chance. A tool that allows customer service representatives to share their screens and walk a customer through a product page may be in testing.

The screen share tool has been spotted in Brazil, according to Apple Insider. Currently, you can chat live with an Apple employee if you have questions about a product you’re viewing in the online store using its “Ask Now” button. Being able to screen share allows the customer service rep to walk you through features of the product, as well as potentially up sell you on accessories.

The feature shows an image of the customer service representative that you are speaking with on top of a chat box. That representative will get your permission prior to initiating a screen share, and is available by phone to walk you through the demonstration as it appears on your screen. Even if you say yes to a screen share over the chat, you still have to click a “yes” or “no thanks” button that appears in a black box at the bottom of your chat screen to actually execute the share.

The feature was first spotted by Brazil website MacMagazine.

Apple also recently alerted customers of its education program that they will be getting an entirely new online store. With the new e-commerce store, educators will be able to create and view proposals, as well as access order statuses online.

hat tip Apple Insider; First image via MacMagazine; second image via Apple Insider

In June 2010, ten startups at the Softex incubator at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas decided to break free from the university incubator they were housed in and form an entrepreneurial co-op of sorts, called the Associação Campinas Startups. Instead of relying on local business executives and professors to guide them, the entrepreneurs decided to learn from each other. The university was very supportive, and business mentors went out of their way to share their knowledge and experience. But the advice was always too theoretical or geared towards big companies. In short, it wasn’t relevant to the leaner, fast-paced technology world. Instead, the entrepreneurs found the greatest value in brainstorming sessions and casual information exchanges with each other over lunch or drinks after work.

This is a common problem for nascent tech incubators all over the world. Unless the entrepreneurs receive active mentoring by entrepreneurial superstars like Paul Graham, Brad Feld, and Dave McClure, almost always the startups and incubators both fail. A successful incubator’s value is in the knowledge shared, not in the office space and administrative support.

There was no Graham, Feld, or McClure in Campinas. So, the entrepreneurs decided to pool their knowledge and help one another. They would meet informally every day, and formally once a week. During the formal sessions, each startup would “scientifically” present the one big idea they were pursuing, a hypothesis on why they believed this would lead to success and measurements to back up their assessment. And during the weekly sessions, they would report their progress on implementing their ideas.

When you are a lone entrepreneur, you are answerable to no one but yourself, and it’s easy to go astray. You don’t have a board to hold you accountable or to guide you when you go off track. The Campinas group’s “peer review” served this purpose. It forced accountability, placing pressure on each team to plan and to perform. It also allowed the entrepreneurs to learn from one other.

Within a year of getting the association into high gear, the ten original startups and two more that joined, had increased their aggregated revenue from $330,000 to $2.1 million. They increased their combined headcount from 39 to 56. Many of the startups changed their strategies and plans, but none, so far, have failed. Several received funding from local angel investors. And this year, ten more startups have joined the group.

Gentros, a biotech startup that joined the association after its founding in 2008, produces vaccines for farm animals. Its CEO, Taíla Lemos, told me that, without the advice and mentoring she received, her startup would certainly have failed. Even though she was in an entirely different industry than the other entrepreneurs, the principles for building a successful company were the same. They taught her how to determine what her costumers needed, identify scientific viability, and manage her R&D projects. She learned the principles of “lean startup” development – the process of quickly developing a proof of concept, testing it with customers and iterating.

There is no telling if any of these startups will survive or achieve long-term success. There are no certainties in entrepreneurship. But the quality of the companies I witnessed was distinctly better than that of the startups I’ve seen in Silicon Valley. Ultimately, I give the startups being fostered in Campinas a higher than average chance of success.

There is also a lot happening on the entrepreneurial scene in Sao Paulo. The most energetic of these groups, Brazilian Innovators, is run by Bedy Yang—an entrepreneur who lives in Silicon Valley, but travels frequently to Sao Paulo to organize networking events. The meetings start with words of wisdom being shared by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs talking over Skype, and then turn into information exchange sessions over wine and cheese. What started two years ago as a group of two dozen has blossomed into a gathering of 300 attendees.

My prediction is that, by the end of this decade, we will see some Mark Zuckerbergs emerging from the slums of Sao Paulo or New Delhi, India or Valparaiso, Chile. Why, you ask? Because entrepreneurs are doing what governments can’t—creating innovation ecosystems.

Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Rio de Janeiro image via Shutterstock

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The firm is based in Sao Paulo, Brazil and will back Brazilian Internet companies with a focus on e-commerce, mobile, and cloud services. Founding partners Yann de Vries and Anderson Thees hope to bring their Silicon Valley expertise to Brazil and offer guidance, financing, and partnerships to startups in Brazil.

Redpoint eVentures has already funded three startups, Viajanet, a travel site; Grupo Xango, a cloud computing service; and Shoes4you, a women’s fashion and footwear site.

Starting a company in Brazil can be a huge undertaking. There is a lot of bureaucratic red tape to cut through and the process of founding a business can take months. Startups and the VCs that invest in them don’t have a ton of professionals, such as lawyers and accountants, to rely on, because the country is lacking them.

Despite the tough entrepreneurial conditions, Brazil is becoming a burgeoning tech startup hot spot. Its economy is large and the population of Internet users is growing. Startups are popping up quickly and gaining a lot of traction. In fact, Peixe Urbano, a daily deals site out of Brazil, won a 2011 Crunchies Award for Best International startup. The company has millions of users and raised several rounds of funding from Benchmark Capital, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and other VCs.

Redpoint and BV Capital eVentures’ portfolios include well-known Silicon Valley tech companies such as Groupon, Angie’s List, and Netflix. This is eVentures’ fourth international fund, following funds for Europe, Russia, and Asia.

The Attorney General of Brazil, according to Brazilian publication O Globo (The Globe), has filed a preliminary injunction to suspend and block the Twitter profiles of users who tweet the whereabouts of speed traps, DUI checkpoints, and radar locations.

The lawsuit seeks to fine those in violation of the injunction R$500,000 (roughly $290,000) a day, and asserts that proactive Twitter users like @RadarBlitzGo, a Twitter bot that announced its end via tweet an hour ago, are defying the country’s penal, criminal, and traffic codes.

The argument is that these Twitter alerts are harming the public by preventing police officers from being able to perform their duties. While the logic may have merit, the action, restricts the speech of Brazilian Twitter users and is akin to content censorship. A number of applications such as Trapster and Waze are built around of the idea of citizen activism and encourage users to report speed traps and radar locations.

Brazil, interestingly enough, is experiencing explosive growth in Twitter usage, and has the second most Twitter accounts of any country — second only to the U.S.

Earlier in the year, regional federal legislators in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo also ordered internet providers to remove the Twitter and Facebook profiles of its members who exposed the operations of the Brazilian police force. That directive also included a R$500,000 daily fine should companies fail to comply.

Twitter recently added the capability to tap dance around these types of takedown requests. An internet provider can choose to withhold content from Twitter users in certain countries while keeping it accessible elsewhere in the world, should it receive a legally binding request to remove tweets. There’s been no indication as to whether Twitter plans to put its new technology to use in response to the injunction.

Twitter declined to comment on the matter.

[via The Next Web]

Photo credit: zealfredor/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Answer an email from your employer after your work day is over and you’re eligible for overtime pay — but only if you’re a Brazilian citizen, that is.

The worker-friendly amendment was added to the country’s labor code and approved by Brazil President Dilma Rousseff in December.

“[The legislation] says that company emails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee,” the Associated Press reported. “Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper this makes it possible for workers answering emails after hours to ask for overtime pay.”

The law is the latest measure designed to address the serious implications of an increasingly 24/7 mobile workforce — it’s also bound to make workers the world round more than a little covetous of their Brazilian peers.

German carmaker Volkswagon recently made headlines for its decision to shut off email to some employees 30 minutes after their shifts end.

[Image via Ian Lamont]

In just four emerging countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — the competitive advantage is $1.6 billion per year. The number is based on a calculation about the competitive harm that results when one firm pays for software and another firm steals it. The one that pays for it will have higher manufacturing costs, meaning it will lose business to its rival.

Microsoft commissioned the study to examine the issue as part of its Global Play Fair Day, which seeks to educate companies and aid enforcement of piracy laws in 60 countries. Of course, when you think about it, the study seems to suggest it’s a smart thing for companies in Brazil, Russia, India and China to use pirated software. Then again, it can be expensive if companies are caught.

Piracy creates more than $2.9 billion in competitive disadvantage per year across manufacturers in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia Pacific. In China, the competitive disadvantage for those who play fair is $837 million; in India, it is $505 million; it’s $115 million in Russia and $186 million in Brazil. Over a five year software life cycle, legit manufacturers will lose more than $8.2 billion to their cheating competitors, Microsoft said.

Microsoft said there are 4.1 million legally licensed PCs used by manufacturing firms in China. But the $837 million in competitive harm enables pirates to reinvest money to build 66 major manufacturing plants, buy 12,700 molding machines or hire an additional 217,000 additional employees.

In India, the $505 million in competitive harm could be used to hire more than 215,000 manufacturing employees. Microsoft pointed out that Hindusthan National Glass & Industries plays by the rules in India and has more than 4,500 employees.

“I do like to have a good night’s sleep, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I was stealing something,” said Bharat Somany, a director at HNG. “Transparency is something that starts vanishing pretty quickly when you [pirate]. Not only do you hide from others, but you end up having things in your own company that are hidden from you — there is no accountability when you go in for pirated software.”

Manufacuring accounts for 16 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product. Over five years, Russian manufacturers who play fair are disadvantaged more than $575 million.

Analysts from Keystone Strategy provided the economic analysis for the report. David Finn, a lawyer for Microsoft, said that the report quantifies the harm that unfair competition causes in emerging markets. On the industry’s behalf, 39 attorneys general in the U.S. — who once slammed Microsoft for anticompetitive practices more than a decade ago — are calling for stronger enforcement against piracy.

The market for social games in Brazil is expected to grow as large as $238 million by 2014, according to a study released by social research firm SuperData. That’s a significant increase from the $136 million the market is expected to be worth by the end of this year.

The study, which is based on the user behavior of 2,414 users in the region also concluded that in that same time frame the size of the social gaming userbase in Brazil will grow to 52.3 million. Currently Brazil accounts for 35 percent of the Latin American social gaming market, which itself makes up five percent of the worldwide market.

A similar study released last month by Amsterdam-based research firm Newzoo revealed that the current userbase of social gamers in Brazil is around 35 million. Earlier this year SuperData released a study showing that virtual goods revenues across all of Latin America are expected to rise to $517 million by next year, with Brazil leading the way, followed by Colombia and Mexico.

Currently the average revenue per paying user in Brazil is $1.87, approximately $0.50 less than in North America. The most popular form of payment is local electronic wallet solutions, such as Payseguro. The largest social network in Brazil is Orkut, which boasts 66 million active users, nearly 60 percent of which hail from Brazil. Games based on platforms other than Facebook, such as Orkut, are expected to reach $5.6 billion in revenue by 2014.

“With social game revenue growing more than 36 percent over the past year alone, there are real opportunities to capture market share and make the most of this first-mover advantage,” Janelle Benjamin, SuperData’s Director of Research, said in a statement.

Greg Waldorf, an investor and board member of real estate portal Trulia, participated in the round and will sit on VivaReal’s board. Simon Baker, former CEO of REA Group, Australia’s leading real estate portal with a market capitalization of over $1B also invested and is an advisor.

Whereas, in the US, real estate agents and portals can make use of a centralized property database called the Multiple Listings Service (MLS), other countries lack such a repository. In those regions, providing access to such a database can attract substantial advertising spend.

In the US, Internet real estate plays such as Zillow and Move, Inc. are valued at $828 million and $277 million respectively, while Trulia is still private with plans for an IPO. In contrast, in the UK, a country lacking a comprehensive, centralized MLS database, a portal such as Right Move is valued at well over $1B. This is could be an example of what Glenn Solomon, partner at GGV Capital, recently wrote about concerning Internet companies outside the US having potential to realize strong profit margins and valuations.

VivaReal, a company founded in 2007, has amassed a database of 260k properties in Brazil and uniquely offers a fixed price for unlimited listings. Its main competitors ZAP and ImovelWeb have approximately 250k and 100k properties respectively. These players are vying for a real estate advertising market estimated to be worth over $2B.

The Globo and Estado São Paulo newspaper groups founded ZAP in 2006, while Archote Publicidade founded Imovel Web in 1999. Though only a fraction of Brazil’s 57k real estate agents advertise on any portal, ZAP and Imovel Web have managed to grow revenues substantially by building direct sales forces to target these customers.

VivaReal’s approach includes direct sales, unique offerings (packages with unlimited listings) as well as leveraging investments in its technology platform for improved user experience and better integration with other sites. This is important because while the US boasts real estate portal integration standards such as RETS, countries such as Brazil have as many as 50 different such standards to support.

With both the soccer World Cup and the Olympic Games coming to Brazil in the coming years, the country should continue to have a dynamic economy and real estate market. According to VivaReal CEO, Brian Requarth, the current funding will provide the resources required to step up sales efforts and better leverage the company’s platform investments.

Other investors participating in the deal include, Shaun Di Gergorio, CEO of iProperty, Asia’s fastest growing property portal network, Wences Casares and Micky Malka of venture fund, Meck, Jeff Fluhr of Angel Hub, Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Chamath Palihapitiya of the Social+Capital Partnership.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The Apple iPad 3 reportedly has a serious challenge ahead of itself when it comes to production: building that blasted pixel-rich Retina Display.

After the completely inaccurate reports about iPhone 5, it’s hard to trust any rumors about upcoming Apple products. But when it comes to the iPad 3, I find the idea of slightly bumping up the screen resolution and internal hardware completely believable. Plus, we’ve already heard similar rumblings from other sources when it comes to the iPad 3.

This latest report, courtesy of CNET, has an unidentified source suggesting that iPad display makers LG and Samsung are presently able to produce a 10-inch screen with a maximum resolution of 2,048 x 1,583. That resolution means the device would have 264 pixels per inch (PPI), and that’s twice the 132 PPI of the iPad 2′s 1024 x 768 display.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t hold up to what Apple has already delivered with its highly touted “Retina Display” that was first featured on the iPhone 4 and is now available on the iPhone 4S. Both of those models feature 960 x 640 resolution on their 3.5-inch displays, which means they have 326 PPI. That’s a far cry from the 264 PPI on these upcoming iPad 3 displays.

Besides not being able to live up to the standard PPI set by the iPhone 4′s screen, the manufacturers are struggling to make these new 264 PPI in large quantities. It’s much easier to manufacture small 3.5-inch displays with incredible pixel density than it is to make a 10-inch display with the same density, so coming up with the actual process has left suppliers stumped.

If manufacturers can’t deliver what Apple wants at high quantities, one other screen option is available: a better-but-not-that-impressive 1,600 x 1,200 resolution display. Even if LG and Samsung are only able to deliver screens with that resolution, it would still be a decent upgrade, especially if Apple updates the processor and cameras on the iPad too.

How important is a higher resolution display to you for the iPad 3?

Demo

Scheduled for June 2012, Demo Brazil will be produced by IDG Brazil. The event will showcase products and companies from the country and act as a platform for companies outside the region looking to launch in the Brazilian market.

Demo Brazil is the latest addition to Demo’s portfolio of events, which includes Demo China, Demo Asia (Singapore) and Demo Spring and Demo Fall in the U.S.

As part of the event series’ Global Launch Program, each company launching at Demo Brazil can participate as a showcase sponsor for all Demo events at no additional charge.

For more details visit IDG Brazil’s website as well as the official Demo site.

Newzoo’s data shows that gaming is spreading rapidly around the globe, thanks to online play, mobile games, and new ways to pay for games such as free-to-play games with micro-transactions.

In Brazil, gamers are expected to spend $2 billion on games in 2011. Online and mobile gaming accounts for 68 percent of time spent gaming and 51 percent of spending.

“Brazil is leading Western countries when it comes to the popularity of new game platforms and business models,” said Newzoo chief executive Peter Warman. “Even with the current economic growth, paying more than $50 for a game is out of reach for many game-crazy Brazilians.”

The growth in Brazil is due to the uptake of social, mobile and massively multiplayer online games, all of which depend on free-to-play business models, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods.

Games on Facebook and the Google-owned social network Orkut account for 11 percent of spending, while casual game sites account for 15 percent. About 16 percent, or $320 million, is spent on MMOs. Mobile devices generate 9 percent, or $180 million. Consoles account for 34 percent of spending, but a big part of that goes to used or pirated copies.

Brazilians spend about an equal amount on boxed PC and Mac games as they do on digital downloads. But $48 million of the boxed spending goes to pirated or used games, which generate no money for game publishers. Of 23 million Brazilians who download games, 64 percent admit to piracy.

By comparison, spending on games in Mexico will reach $1.2 billion in 2011, according to Newzoo. Game preferences there and spending behavior are similar to the U.S. Mobile and online games account for about 60 percent of the time and 31 percent of the money spent on gaming.

In Russia, gamers will spend $1.5 billion on games in 2011. MMO and PC gaming account for 56 percent of spending. Casual, social and mobile account for 48 percent of the time spent gaming. And 49 percent of Russia’s 38 million gamers are female.

The search company has updated its Transparency Report, which discloses inquiries that governments make about Google users as well as their requests to remove content. The update adds data from July 2010 to December 2010, along with new ways to digest that data.

The announcement comes on the heels of news the United State’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Google’s business practices. “We hope that our Web site improvements help you to see more clearly how the Web is shaped by government influence and how Google responds to requests for information and removals,” writes Matt Braithwaite of Google’s Transparency Engineering in a company blog post.

Google’s Transparency Report also offers tools to visualize server traffic. (Warning: If you have an addiction to data porn, you might have to suspend all hopes of productivity for the day after visiting this site.)

According to Google, “this tool visualizes disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it’s a government blocking information or a cable being cut.”

Below is what Syria’s traffic looked like during May and June. Note the massive dip on June 3rd, after Syria shut down its internet, rendering more than two-thirds of all Syrian networks unreachable.

Google also provides a map pinpointing removal requests by country. It currently shows Brazil having the most requests in 2010, with 263 government requests for content removal (versus the U.S.’ 54 requests.). According to Google, Brazil’s high figure was due to the popularity of Google’s social networking site, Orkut. Brazil’s Transparency Report reveals that during the Fall election period in Brazil, the number of court orders issued from electoral courts rose, ordering removal of content related to political campaigns. (One court ordered removal of more than 11,500 photos from Picasa, Google’s photo site, alleging the photos contained images of pages from copyrighted books.)

Also notable is that Hong Kong had fewer than 10 removal requests, all of which Google complied with. This low number is surprising considering Google’s rocky relationship with China. In January 2010 Google had a face off with China over censorship and in March 2011 Google accused the Chinese government of interfering with Gmail accounts.

Both the main website for the government of Brazil and the office of the President of Brazil were offline when VentureBeat tried to access the accounts. Both sites were taken down by LulzSecBrazil, a subgroup of the hacker group that has made headlines recently for several high-profile attacks and for its sassy attitude toward the public with public releases and Tweets.

“TANGO DOWN brasil.gov.br and presidencia.gov.br LulzSecBrazil,” LulzSec said on its main Twitter account. “Our Brazilian unit is making progress. Well done @LulzSecBrazil, brothers!”

Hacker group Anonymous also posted a video that criticized the Brazilian government’s manipulation of information. The hacker group demanded that the Brazilian government be more transparent about its actions. LulzSec and Anonymous recently launched “Operation AntiSec,” a call to arms asking hackers everywhere to attack government websites and deface them.

The group said it is hacking websites like CIA.gov for fun, rather than for political reasons. But recent activities by the group are reminiscent of tactics employed by hacker group Anonymous, a group known for digging for personal information and posting it on the web in retaliation for attacks on its members. The group recently outed two “snitches” that might have led to the arrest of a 19-year-old U.K. man suspected of cooperating with LulzSec.

LulzSec said it came from the same core group of hackers that would go on to become known as Anonymous. LulzSec’s attacks also bear an increasing resemblance to those made by Anonymous. For instance, Anonymous regularly takes up political causes, and a recent attack on Senate.gov is one of several politically-motivated attacks the LulzSec team has executed.