Year: <span>2009</span>
Year: 2009

Year: 2009

QR Code Book with Twitter Feed

You just gotta love this simple yet effective innovation. An online bookstore in Brazil launched a campaign using a new exclusive book with only QR Codes inside.. so far so cool. However, the ‘never ending story’ routinely pulls keywords from Twitter feeds to keep updating the content! The first edition is already sold-out and they are looking at this platform now for future concepts as well. No doubt the good folks over at Denso Wave would be thrilled to hear about this one.

Japan Social Networking Survey

Point On Research conducted this survey, in Japanese, on Japan SNS in early June, with interesting results. The questionnaire targeted demographics, representing 50-50 sample of male to female and equal 25% ratio on the age split between teens, twenties thirties and forties, for feedback on platforms and access with Mixi the clear leader at 72% and mobile preferred to PC by more than 4 to 1 margin. Another note of interest shows that over 65% of the group indicate they are daily users!

Innovation in Japan – Taking on the Economist

We just could not let This Article go un-challenged – hence see our ++ respond inline below.

The most important factor that led to America’s stunning success in information technology was not the free market but government regulation. Federal trustbusters made AT&T lease its lines to others and eventually broke up the giant telephone company.

++ The Japanese government made similar moves with NTT. Perhaps a more valid point passed over is how the respective governments historically manage and allocate the public wireless spectrum. Results clearly show a "Regulated" Japan approach enabled the mobile industry here to significantly trump the progress of a so-called "Free Market" USA (highest bid auctions) model.

Later they forced IBM to separate its hardware and software businesses. These actions opened the door to competition and lower prices. More important, they changed the industry’s structure, replacing monoliths with smaller, specialised companies which have to work with others with complementary skills. The result has been tremendous innovation. …**Counterintuitively, fragmenting these industries helped common standards to emerge, they say.

++ All of the major vendors have smaller spin-off suppliers here doing the piece work.. often the deepest source of innovation is coming from bottom up to the likes of NEC, Fujitsu and Panasonic et all. **Yet standards in Japan – especially for mobile as mentioned below – are somehow less relevant? Continued after the jump>>

Girls Mobile SNS to Farm for Boys

CyberAgent introduced an unusual mobile SNS platform last month, sensing spring was in the air, targeted at women shopping for a husband. The angle appears to be that ladies create an account, adding portrait profiles of all the guys they know, to share details within their ‘hopefully growing’ network of like-minded girl friends. The twist here – in cute icon loving land – is that the boys are represented as lambs, cows or horses depending on their flirty, lazy or agressive nature.. can you imagine! Any bets on how long until someone comes up with the jungle version of this dude ranch?

Manga Mode Launches in Europe

DoCoMo just announced that they will provide popular Japanese manga content for Europe with offerings via Bouygues Telecom becoming available as of today. The initial library of translated titles, including; NARUTO, DRAGON BALL and DEATH NOTE all published by SHUEISHA Inc., will be accessible under the the MANGA MODE section of the carriers mobile portal along with a dedicated reader.

Japan Approves 3.9G Network Plans

According to multiple sources the Communications Ministry has approved business plans for 3.9G services submitted by four Japanese telecom operators; DoCoMo, KDDI, SoftBank Mobile and eMobile, with service roll-outs beginning in September 2010 through late 2012. The combined investments to build base stations, service equipment and related facilities for these new networks are forecast to top 1 Trillion JPY, or approx. $10 Billion, by 2014.

iPhone in Japan: Past, Present and Future

Plenty of news today considering the recent announcement from Apple, the iPhone 3GS will hit here June 26th, so we thought it would be worthwhile to review where things stand to-date for Steves Amazing Device in Japan. Since both Apple and SoftBank Mobile have always refused to disclose unit sales, even targets for that matter, it has naturally been an ongoing obsession for many – how is the iPhone doing in Japan? There are several angles to approach this on so for starters lets just say that, while there seems to be recent awakening and therefore increased adoption, expectation often leads to disappointment.

As the 1st year anniversary since launch here last July is fast approaching we have assembled our most candid and personal observations, for WWJ Subscribers, after the jump.

Pandemic Tracking via Mobile – Part 2

The Japan Times picked up on this thread, regarding the use of mobile phones to manage pandemics, with details of a funding proposal to the Ministry of Communications. Basically a disease-tracking system using GPS, the SoftBank subsidiary plans to run an initial pilot by outfitting 1,000 elementary school students with handsets to trial the program. This is one of several dozen approved funding proposals and, as we mentioned earlier, a natural attention grabber considering the combination of recent panics and predictable privacy issues.

NTT Com Offers Free Eye-Fi WLAN

NTT Communications just announced the launch of their new “HOTSPOT connect” service offering free connectivity to specific Internet services via their HOTSPOT WLAN network in Japan. The first offering – dubbed “HOTSPOT connect x Eye-Fi” – will allow users to upload photos and videos from cameras, camcorders and other portable devices that are equipped with an Eye-Fi SD memory card which has built-in Wi-Fi capability. The HOTSPOT connect platform is openly available to anyone, including non-subscribers to HOTSPOT, normally a paid service.

The Worlds Largest Cell Phone Strap!

SoftBank has introduced a summer campaign, targeted at attracting new users, offering coupons and gift certificates along with the largest keitai strap you’ve (n)ever seen! Their mascot, ‘Oto-san’ who is a hugely popular canine celebrity via the companies cheeky TV commercials, is available as a 30cm tall stuffed toy (see the video here) to the lucky few who can answer a set of skill-testing questions. As an added bonus if you squeeze his tail expect him to speak with one of ten – snarly albeit fatherly – different lines of advice. btw: this episode of the family dinner table discussion about going to Hawaii is just Classic! If you enjoy that, then see the entire TVCM video gallery Here.