Number Portability - DoCoMo Relying on Napster Japan

Despite the resounding silence from DoCoMo’s website, Tower Records (part-owned by DoCoMo) have just introduced a joint-venture service with Napster in Japan. The Tower Records Japan-Napster JV will provide music distribution services for PC and mobile from an initial catalogue of 1.5 million songs. The initial service launch only allows content purchased by premium subscribers - a subscription costs 1,980 JPY per month - to be moved from the PC to mobile devices - and at this time only one handset (F902is) is supported.

DoCoMo took a 42 percent share of Tower Records here in November 2005 and - if the on-scene hype at DoCoMo’s booth at this week’s CEATEC consumer electronics show is any guide - they appear ready to announce a more aggressive mobile music device line-up in the coming weeks.

The Tower Records initiative appears not unrelated to DoCoMo’s overall mobile music strategy, which has so far run a distant second to mobile market leader KDDI/au.

Since 2002, KDDI have seen strong traffic, sales and handset popularity with their Chaku Uta, Chaku Uta Full, and Chaku Motion full-track audio and video offering. More recently, their new ‘LISMO’ unified PC/mobile content download and syncing service has started to gain customers, while DoCoMo have only this year in June started pushing Chaku Uta Full.

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