Year: <span>2006</span>
Year: 2006

Year: 2006

McDonald's Using QR Codes

This tid-bit has been around for awhile now, but in case you missed it: “In their ever continuing effort to re-educate the world about the wholesome nutritional value of their produce, McDonald’s have taken a step forward in Japan and applied a clever bit of technology to bring the nutritional label into the 21st century. Each burger now comes equipped with its own QR code printed on the wrapper which navigates you to an online site where you can see the amount of calories and fat you are consuming.” Information is available both for individual items and full-meal deals.

DoCoMo Mobile Credit: Everything You Know About 3G is Useless

DoCoMo Mobile Credit: Everything You Know About 3G is Useless by Mobikyo KKWWJ has spotted the first presence of NTT DoCoMo’s ‘DCMX’ mobile credit (card) service on the streets of Tokyo and, once again, the future has arrived. Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, WWJ’s director of digital media, en route to a central Tokyo video shoot a few days ago, spied the first street-level advert for retail goods payable via DCMX (image at right).

Predictably, the pitch came from Girl’s Walker, Xavel’s icon of community-centric, user-recommended mobile shopping, which earned the company Pharaonic riches long before dusty old ‘blogs’ were ever invented. Girl’s Walker is touting a special fall line of fashionable goods that can be paid for via “DoCoMo credit,” which takes the form of a real credit payment for adults, or the purchase cost is added to the monthly phone bill, for cash-flush, under-age teens. Note no reference to any sort of ‘card’ – the service is the phone, and credit ‘cards’ are oh-so-1970s.

DCMX is shaping up to be the main pillar in DoCoMo’s consumer financial services strategy that will lock in mobilers and secure massive revenues long after 3G – and the mere delivery of mobile digital content – has become a low-margin sideline that markets elsewhere still can’t comprehend. DCMX isn’t merely the the ‘Next Big Thing’ – it’s everything; and it’s going to make 3G itself redundant (WWJ subscribers log in for full viewpoint and details on the DCMX mobile credit service).

Mobile email rocks!

I’ve had some interesting discussions in the past ten days with folks in Japan, Europe and elsewhere on the topic of mobile email. The topic also came up at last Friday’s W2 Forum seminar on Japan and Korea (“Trends & Insights from Japan & Korea“), held in London and attended by a lively and interesting group of folks from publishers, content providers, media, analysts, ad agencies, tech vendors and others.

HTC Japan Scores Second Carrier Deal

SoftBank has just issued a press release – together with HTC – indicating that High Tech Computer Corp. CEO Peter Chou and Vodafone KK President and Representative Executive Officer Masayoshi Son have signed a strategic collaboration agreement under which both parties will collaborate to develop and sell 3G PDA phones in Japan. According to the statement, products will be available as of late 2006.

JR Boosts m-Commerce and Survey Results

JR has announced they will drop the previous requirement to have the company’s “View” credit card in order to take advantage of their Mobile Suica service as of 21 October. They have also indicated that by sometime in December this year, SoftBank Mobile customers with FeliCa-enabled handsets (no model types announced) will also finally be able to use JR’s m-commerce system.

Windows Live Messenger for Mobile

Windows Live Messenger for MobileAfter 6 months of beta offering the Windows Live Messenger official PC version became available for upgrade & download in June this year. Together with this latest release, the company also introduced a mobile Java Appli for DoCoMo customers using FOMA 3G handsets. WWJ met with Ho Chang, Product Manager for Windows Live at Microsoft Japan, to take a test drive on the companies Live Messenger for BREW due to be available on selected KDDI/au devices later this month. Also note, Mr. Chang made a presentation earlier this year to Mobile Monday Tokyo and his powerpoint presentation is available Here.

Just like the PC version, it will enable users to sign-in, exhange text messages – including emicons – with their existing contact list, check and send email (Hotmail), show their online presence and display name all in real-time. According to Ho, the entire certification process took about one-year from their intial proposal to the carrier for planning, testing and product release. However, the final offering is “far more robust than whats available in the U.S.” running a faster network with a larger app. on the latest BREW version. Targeted at flat-rate data customers the app. will not come pre-installed but will be offered as a free download it will be the first Microsoft app. deployed on KDDI’s official menu.

KDDI in PR Blitz

KDDI has just added a few tasty tidbits on their recent announcements: the new W43S handset by Sony Ericsson is ready to roll as of Friday, 15 September, and they will have some interesting new BREW titles (including mobile multiplayers) on display at next week’s Tokyo Game Show. As an apparent counter measure to the free iPod Nano ‘bribe’ just announced by SoftBank Mobile, KDDI has also introduced the new “Large Satisfaction Campaign,” which will offer a variety of prizes for new users.. whew!

SoftBank Announces – Almost – iPhone

To celebrate the upcoming official re-branding of Vodafone KK to SoftBank Mobile, due for 1 October, we just received a press release [.PDF in Japanese] announcing the company will offer – starting today – a free 2-GB iPod nano to customers who buy their 705sh handset. We expected to hear more from the folks in Shiodome about their mobile number portability battle plan and this looks like a good start. We also should point out that Vodafone have already been selling the best example of an iPhone, the V803T by Toshiba, in Japan for well over a year now.

DoCoMo Aquires Fuel-Cell Stake

DoCoMo announced today they will form a business and capital alliance with Aquafairy Co. to develop fuel-cell products. DoCoMo will acquire an approximate 36.5-percent stake in the company through a purchase of newly allocated shares in the near future. Aquafairy, which develops and markets micro fuel cells for mobile devices, was established in Osaka in 2006 and has 11 employees. It has capital of 33 million yen.

eAccess to Borrow DoCoMo Network

Japan’s eAccess Ltd. said on Monday its wireless unit will borrow its bigger rival NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s network to offer a nationwide cellphone service. eAccess’ mobile unit will roam on DoCoMo’s network in areas outside the major cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. The agreement will helps eAccess launch a nationwide voice service in March 2008 before completing its own network. Prior to the nationwide mobile phone service, eAccess aims to offer wireless data service in March 2007.