Year: <span>2003</span>
Year: 2003

Year: 2003

Importing Wireless Products from Abroad

Importing Wireless Products from AbroadDo you have BREW contents that you want to put into 10 million cellphone browsers? We know somebody who wants to hear from you. Spun out of trading powerhouse Nissho Iwai and backed by camera giant Olympus, ITX E-Globaledge Corp. is a small company hungry to meet U.S., Korean and European ventures to introduce your BREW content, and your cutting-edge soft- and hardware, to a company with a huge appetite: KDDI. More than just a go-between to help customize ideas for the Japanese market, ITX also creates its own content. More interestingly, it recently put $4 million into a Seattle-based venture blending XML. Full Program Run-time 18:28

IPv6 Experiment for Mobile Phones

Japan and China are planning a joint experiment on a new generation of Internet-capable mobile phones for high-speed data transmissions between the two countries, telecommunications officials said Sunday. The three-year project, aimed at promoting better Asian information technology systems, will begin next month and use Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), the officials said.

Korea Set to Launch 3G on W-CDMA

Korea is set to launch the controversial W-CDMA mobile service in December, despite growing concerns about overlapping investment and the poor chance of commercial success. SK Telecom Co., the country’s largest mobile carrier, and KTF Co., ranked second, said they would push ahead with W-CDMA services, as planned.

Nokia Faces 3G Challenge from Asia

Not only is Nokia facing intense competition from rival manufacturers, but its relationship with its customers, such as Vodafone and mmO2, is becoming increasingly tricky too. Yesterday the Finnish press was full of comments made by Peter Erskine, the chief executive of mmO2, who claimed 3G handsets starting to appear from Asian manufacturers were generally superior to Nokia’s.

Vodafone KK: All Quiet on the 3G Front

Prepare for some grim reading. There wasn’t a lot of good news on Vodafone’s Eastern Front, for the short term at least, arising out of Vodafone K.K.’s November 18-announced first-half financials. It is eerily quiet in the Little V machine gun nests out here on the 3G frontier. Vodafone K.K. faces gently sliding ARPU, wilting subscriber uptake and a long haul launch for a fully-fledged rollout of cutting-edge 3G keitai. “Japan Telecom Holdings (JTH) stock finished down 15 percent for the day after posting first half earnings,” notes CSFB senior telecoms analyst Mark Berman. “The market is essentially saying that it has completely lost confidence in both the competitiveness of Vodafone in Japan, and believes further that the current … management is more concerned with appeasing parent Vodafone than it is with rewarding minority shareholders,” he writes this week. On the other hand, the basis for a big comeback could be on the cards for next summer. We’ll give an overview of these points below, but before we start blazing away. ** We’d like to sincerely apologize to Vodafone K.K. for our mucking up an item in the Happy Packet discount series in last week’s newsletter. For the record, packet rate slashes DO apply to 3G, and we said they didn’t ** Honto-ni, gomen nasai, Vodafone-Sama! WWJ subscribers log-on and in..

Wind Launches i-mode in Italy

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. reported that Wind Telecomunicazioni S.p.A. announced the release of DoCoMo’s i-mode service to the Italian market today. Italy marks the eighth market for i-mode service, which is already available in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, and Spain. Wind is Italy’s third largest mobile telecom company, with approximately 10 million subscribers.

How Europe Really Differs from Japan

WWJ co-founder Daniel Scuka reports from Germany

Earlier this month, I wrapped up a 7-city seminar tour, “Mobile Kaizen in Japan.” The one-day MKiJ seminars, co-produced with Mobile Economy, were an in-depth look at the success factors behind the wireless Internet in Japan. Here are some of my own findings..

Attendees included mid- and senior-level people from carriers, content providers, consulting firms, and mobile application houses, as well as several academics, some students, and one or two journalists. All in all, it was a fun, eye-opening experience, and – as best I can tell from verbal and mail feedback – was well enjoyed by our audience.

KDDI Takes Half of New Subs in October

Japan’s Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) announced that Japan’s mobile phone users amounted to 83.91 million as of the end of October. KDDI took more than half of the share, 52.6%, for the single month for the first time, thanks to the successful promotion of 3G service. October’s net increases saw KDDI back at the top position with 185,900 units, followed by NTT DoCoMo (146,000 units) and J-Phone (33,200 units).

Japan Telecom Profits Fall on 3G Costs

Japan Telecom Holdings owned two-thirds by Britain’s Vodafone Group said on Tuesday that half-year operating profit fell 12 percent due to the hefty cost of building up its 3G network. Its wireless unit, Vodafone KK, known as J-Phone until September, scrambled to expand the area coverage of its high-speed 3G network this year in a bid to catch up with NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp.

3G Production for TD-SCDMA Scheduled

The developer of China’s first 3G mobile phone set using Chinese standards signed a letter of intent on Sunday with a telecom company on commercialization of the product. Under the deal, the Chongqing Institute of Posts and Telecommunications, the developer, and China Putian Corp, the country’s largest telecom equipment supplier, will jointly set up a production base in Chongqing Municipality, southwest China, for manufacturing TD-SCDMA 3G mobile phones.