Year: <span>2007</span>
Year: 2007

Viewpoint: What Leads Mobile in Japan?

Holographic projection demo at DoCoMo R&D Labs, November 2006 ©MobikyoThe genesis of today’s Viewpoint was back in March, when we spotted this op-ed referring to Japan mobile that had stated: “What’s different about the Japanese mobile market is that innovation is moving toward business models and marketing tactics instead of technical features and functions.” That op-ed piece in turn cited a new research report on eMarketer, “Japan: Marketing to a Mobile Society,” which insisted: “What stands out in the current Japanese experience is the fact that the center of gravity for getting through to Japanese mobile users has shifted in favor of business models and marketing tactics as opposed to new technical features and mobile phone functions.”

We took exception to both these as serious mis-analyses of the cornerstone role that technological innovation and network infrastructure competition have played – and continue to play – in powering Japan’s mobile success story. After contact with the eMarketer editors, we agreed to write separate opinion pieces, which we would both republish side-by-side in our newsletters, as an excellent way to hash out the topic and let you – our collective readers – decide.

Sadly, the marketing guys at eMarketer quashed the idea, as the subject and the detailed discussion would be “too technical a topic for our [eMarketer’s] newsletter.” But we know that WWJ readers are more than smart enough to figure out for themselves what’s really driving the mobile Internet in Japan! So we wished the eMarketer editors best of luck in the future, again gave thanks that WWJ doesn’t have any meddling marketing guys, and herewith present to you our Viewpoint.
(Subscribers login to access the full article by WWJ editor Daniel Scuka)

Image: Holographic projection demo at NTT DoCoMo R&D Labs, November 2006 ©Mobikyo

Capcom Releases Mobile StreetFighter II

Capcom Interactive has announced the mobile version of StreetFighter II in celebration of the 20th anniversary since the popular arcade game was released. The download, targeted via US-based operators, runs $6.99 and looks very much like the real-deal. Modeled on the arcade classic the game, Street Fighter II allows the player to battle through more than eight different stages including several boss characters on their way to becoming the World Champion.

LiMo Foundation Gaining Membership

The LiMo Foundation issued a statement [.PDF] to announce it has experienced a surge in membership as some of world’s most well-known mobile industry players have joined the Foundation during the past six months. Aplix, Celunite, LG Electronics, McAfee and Wind River have joined as Core members and will participate on the foundation board. Additionally, ARM, Broadcom, Ericsson, Innopath, KTF, MontaVista Software and NXP B.V. have joined as Associate members.

Aiuta Hits 1M Full-Track Downloads

According to IFPI, the third single by an anonymous quartet of Japanese medical students has become the first full-track mobile download anywhere to sell a million copies. This digital music milestone belongs to Aiuta (“Love Song”) by GreeeeN, a new act signed to Universal Music Japan. The track was released on May 16 as a full-track download for mobile, and its popularity spread rapidly through web, radio, SNS and word-of-mouth exposure.

End of an Era: Reflections on Ringtones

It seems like only yesterday that polyphonic ringtones were all the rage in Japan, with mobile content companies frantically hustling to create MIDI-like files for all the popular songs in first 4-voice polyphony in 2000, followed by 16-poly in 2001 and 40-poly in 2002. Although many in the mobile industry thought the ringtone market here had peaked by that time, it somehow managed to keep growing for another three years. In fact, it has really only been in the past seven months or so that we’re finally seeing the major shakeout here that was expected several years ago.

Hitachi and Alvarion Partner on WiMax

Hitachi and Alvarion have agreed to develop Broadband Mobile Wireless Access System using Mobile WiMAX technology jointly in Japan and overseas market. The goal of this agreement is to develop system solutions, combining base station technology of Alvarion with the mobile gateway technology, construction and maintenance technology of Hitachi. Alvarion also announced activity in this space recently with NTT West in Okinawa.

Acrodea Signs Vivid Deal with DoCoMo

Tokyo-based Acrodea has made several recent announcements, in Japanese only, concerning the adoption of their Vivid product suite with handset makers across all three operators. The most significant of which would be the inclusive licensing agreement concluded with DoCoMo for their Vivid UI to be deployed on all models scheduled to be released going forward. The companies Panorama and 3D Message middleware is also now available on handsets from Sharp and Sanyo via SoftBank Mobile and KDDI respectively. See WWJ’s hands-on demo. video of the UI in action Here.

ACCESS Adds New ACE Partners

ACCESS has announced the addition of eight new members to the growing roster of companies supporting its ACCESS Linux Platform and NetFront browser technologies through the ACCESS Connect Ecosystem (ACE) global partner program. The addition of the eight new members brings the total number ACE partners to over 65. ACE partners work closely with ACCESS to expand the mobile Linux market and help fuel the growth of converged technologies and devices.

Media-FLO Info for Japan

Qualcomm quietly opened MediaFLO-info.com on 1 August as part of the companies march to launch their mobile tv broadcast services in Japan. The Japanese only version includes overview materials, links to the FloForum and Mobile Media Planning Corp., which is wholly-owned by SoftBank, along with a sign-up form for their mail magazine. No official press release announcing the new site could be found, in English or Japanese, at the time of this posting.