NTT DoCoMo just announced that DoCoMo Europe (France) S.A.S., a wholly owned subsidiary of DoCoMo Europe Ltd., will be closed at the end of this year and a representative office in Paris will be established in January 2008. With the main role of the subsidiary now reduced to the monitoring of the European telecom industry, DoCoMo has decided to replace it with a representative office that will liaise in matters related to DoCoMo’s business interests in Europe.
NXP, founded by Philips, and Sony Corporation have announced the formation of Moversa, a joint venture to drive global adoption of contactless smart card applications in mobile phones using Near Field Communication (NFC). Moversa will plan, develop, produce and market a secure chip, a Universal Secure Access Module (U-SAM), that incorporates both MIFARE and FeliCa operating systems and applications. The U-SAM will also support other contactless operating systems and applications based on customer requirements. Moversa will be led by co-presidents Guus Frericks of NXP and Toshio Yoshihara of Sony.
The announcement finally hit the web this week, possibly one of the worst kept secrets in recent times, that SoftBank and Disney have come to terms on rolling out the long-awaited Mickey Mouse MVNO in Japan. An obvious evolution, often speculated during the Vodafone years, for WDIG who launched on i-mode in 2000 and claim over 3M subscribers to their various official content offerings. While Google has dozens of posts about the ‘news’.. Wireless Watch Japan may have a nice little extra scoop!
CyberAgent has reported consolidated results for the full year ended September 30, 2007, with net sales rising 26.4% on the previous year to 76,007 million yen, operating income rose 26.7% to 5,501 million yen, and ordinary income also rose 38.2% to 5,143 million yen on the year. These gains were driven by solid growth in site listing (search results) advertising and main portal site advertising sales in the advertising agency business, as well as sharp advances in the mobile business and commission and fee collection businesses such as the finance-related business and online game services.
The TCA just announced results for October confirming that SoftBank Mobile has won the most net subscribers for sixth consecutive months. Since the introduction of their so-called White Plan, which includes flat-rate voice calling within their network, the company has continued to grow it’s third place market share. According to the official numbers for October 2006, when SoftBank Mobile re-launched the troubled Vodafone KK operations, they have gained almost 2M new customers.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.; BONN, Germany; TAOYUAN, Taiwan; SAN DIEGO, Calif.; SCHAUMBERG, Ill., November 5, 2007 — A broad alliance of leading technology and wireless companies …
Sharp announced on Friday that it has passed the five-million mark for shipments of 1Seg digital tv phones in Japan. Since releasing its first hanset in May 2006 – originally introduced by Vodafone KK – Sharp has deployed a total of eight models across all three operators. By reaching this milestone in less than 18 months, Sharp becomes the first OEM in the industry to ship five million 1Seg handsets.
Domestic market incumbant NTT DoCoMo came out with all guns blazing during their press conference at the Grand Park Hyatt in Tokyo on November 1st. For the first time ever they combined the launch for both of their upcoming 700 and 900 series models – a record 23 handsets unveiled at once – and the announcement included several new service offerings as well. Marking another notable difference from previous line-up introductions was the absence of Natsuno-san, famed ‘father of i-mode’ and always energetic MC, from the stage.
The companies flag-ship 905i-series included 10 models which will all come fully loaded with high-speed HSDPA, 1Seg digitial-tv, DCMX m-commerce, GPS, 2in1 dual-sim identity and enabled with GSM chipsets to allow global roaming complete with voice-to-text translation capabilities for English, Chinese and Japanese. Further enhancements in handset design include increased multi-media applications in motion sensor gaming, flat-rate music subscriptions and i-motion videos along with updated i-area mapping and cell broadcast emergency announcement services and Flash Lite 3 pre-installed all coming as standard features across the board.
Kyocera Wireless and INSIDE Contactless have announced a global collaboration to integrate the INSIDE Contactless NFC solution for mobile payments in select prototype Kyocera mobile phones. As part of the collaboration, Kyocera will build NFC-enabled models enhanced with MicroRead, allowing the technology to be used in various banking pilot projects and initial adoption globally.
IT Media is reporting that IPMobile applied to the Tokyo District Court for voluntary bankruptcy today. The article states that their wireless business license was returned to the Telecommunications Ministry at the same time and indicates the company debt is about 900 million yen with 110 creditors.
