Search

There's plenty of chatter about the global startup scene along with so-called 'innovation' opportunities and many challenges faced by players at all levels in that space. It would be easy to pepper this with a gazillion links to material describing how Japan is risk-adverse and/or has no VC base to build next-gen. companies.. bla-bla-bla. Such simplistic points, seldom well balanced, need another post to counter with a wave of my magic reality wand. No, the tight focus today is two-fold: we are headed into a "Startup Renaissance" in Japan and, therefore, considering carefully near to mid-term road ahead with that being the case.

D2C announces their 11th annual Mobile Advertising Awards, accepting applications now via dedicated site, details: http://bit.ly/xXpcEO

Spotlight on Japan event; our 1,500 word review of @momosv May 16th presentations @PARCinc, better grab a coffee! http://bit.ly/kpOGIb

Natsuno-san, father of imode, presented at the annual Mobidec event on past, present and future of Mobile in Japan. http://bit.ly/gcOLVK

ITU World 2009 runs again this year, Oct. 5 - 9 in Geneva, with 18 Japanese Telecom leaders on-hand to discuss ICTs for economic growth. With its focus on development opportunities, the event brings together corporate social responsibility and displays cases of best practices. As always it looks to be a fantastic high-level gathering and we hope to be there!

Stepping forward with a spring in their stride market leader NTT DoCoMo introduced 18 new handsets for their Summer series at a presser here in the Prince hotel this week. Along with these latest models, which included the rumored HTC Magic Android unit, big D also announced a few interesting service additions. Of course WWJ was on the scene, slightly foggy from our MoMo Tokyo event the night before, and will post our thoughts - including link to video - for the paid members after the jump. Meanwhile, you can get a peek at the new offerings via their new flash website and the basic specs in English from official .pdfs with the original press release Here.

Hola - we are finally back in the groove here from our MWC adventure last month. The congress was chaos as usual this year with the predictable rush of news, presentations and evening event hopping. While attendence YoY was down, almost 50,000 players managed the annual tre

DoCoMo announced that the board of directors has met and proposed changes in executive positions for official approval at the shareholders and board of directors meetings scheduled to be held on June 20, 2008. Most notably the replacement of President and CEO Masao Nakamura who will hand over the helm after 4-years to Ryuji Yamada. Also noted as officially resigning, and widely reported, SVP Takeshi Natsuno. A quick trip down memory lane after the jump.

Takeshi Natsuno, famed father of the i-mode platform is set to step down, according to reports in the Japanese media. "He is going to be leaving the company at the end of April," an informed source in DoCoMo told AFP. The writing was on the wall when he was not front and center - as usual - hosting the 905i-series launch here last November. "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" WWJ reported at the time.

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, 2in