Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note

New WWJ Website is Live!

Aaaaaand we’re back. As you may have noticed.. it was a (re)Construction zone here for the month of October 2023 with tons of archive material, including many video programs in legacy file formats — all running on backend looong overdue for modern update, Whew!

It’s been ‘fun’ wandering down memory lane — we hope you enjoy this new version, online again as promised in time for Halloween!

We’re on Sabbatical for 2023

While our WWJ activities technically started in the spring of 2001, with the J@pan Inc newsletter, it wasn’t until near that year-end we really got underway. By close of 2022 we marked two full decades focused on the business of mobile in Japan – it was time for a break.

Certainly taking a defrag year to reflect & consider will be a good chance to review options for our next steps — We’ll be back.. 😎

Building a Community Network in Tokyo

Right about this time ten years ago (Ya, Ten Years!) email was flying, as it does, related to plans for a large executive tour group set to visit Tokyo. Considering the agenda of meetings expected it was obvious there was No Way we would see everyone. So an evening welcome mixer to ‘gather the tribes’ was a logical solution and then out of the blue a note from Finland suggesting we host a so-called MobileMonday event. The rest, so they *say, is history.

A Startup Renaissance is Building in Japan

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.

Sick of the iSpin – Featuring the Hard Facts

A quick post to set the record straight. All too many times we have heard the urban legend that goes something along the lines that SoftBank brought the iPhone to Japan and that move directly translated into winning the so-called monthly net addition subscriber wars. However, the actual results – using official numbers from the TCA – paints a rather different picture.

Tokyo 2020 – Game On! – Discover the Future

It’s Official: Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games! Clearly it will be an interesting road ahead over the next 2,510 days and, of course, that “Discover Tomorrow” campaign tagline resonates with our longtime efforts in Japan as well. While it’s a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon here in the western suburbs, with local matsuri taiko drums and yokobue flutes in the air, I just wanted to mark this historic day with a few quick thoughts…

DoCoMo Strategic Shift – Smart Life Partner

DoCoMo is always an interesting player to watch, and not just by comparison within our domestic market. Recently they made a clear ‘Mid-Term Vision’ statement shifting focus towards a so-called ‘Lifestyle Services’ company. Fair guess at first-blush on this for most folks overseas would be somewhere between ‘sure, nice PR speak’ and ‘good luck with that’ based on experience with their own local telcos. However, for those who have paid attention, again not just in Japan, the increasing action in OTT (as noted *importantly* below) and the 4th Wave concept are well upon us here.