Photo Credit: Shutterstock, Electric bulletin board of investment information.

The increasing number of IPOs will be welcomed by Japan as it continues to struggle with keeping its economy afloat in 2014

Japan had some good news to share: the country has seen a record number of IPOs in 2014, up from 64 in 2013 to 86 this year, according to a report by Japan Exchange Group released this week.

This is a significant increase from 2009 that saw only 19 IPOs. Furthermore, 2014 was an especially strong year for Japanese tech companies, which seem to have stolen the limelight; 51 per cent of all IPOs this year came from the IT sector.

Breaking down Japan's IPO streak

A further breakdown of the country's tech sector IPOs in 2014 is as follows: Digital contents and games (10 per cent); classified sites (nine per cent); web service/adtech (nine per cent); software/sier (eight per cent); e-commerce (four per cent); Big Data (four per cent); electric appliances (four per cent); and crowdsourcing (three per cent).

Perhaps the most recent example that has been making headlines in the tech community is Japanese gaming giant Gumi, which only last month announced an upcoming (December 18) IPO at a valuation of around US$900 million.

As TechCrunch pointed out at the time, that figure could have exceeded $1 billion were it not for the Japanese yen hitting a seven-year low against the dollar on November 13.

With Japan's economy still in a fragile state and on the wrong side of recession — even if only just — based on data from Q3, the growing number of tech IPOs will be welcomed as a sign of improving circumstances as the country tries to pull itself back into growth following its ‘lost decades' (1991-2000 and 2001-2010).

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Nikkei billboard on the street