Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

MIT Tokyo Tour: 17-22 April 2005

MIjThe Mobile Intelligence Japan mission PR release hit the Web yesterday, and the April 2005 trip promises to provide in-depth know-how and actionable intelligence direct from the heart of mobile Japan. MIJ will comprise six days of intensive company visits, executive presentations, application demonstrations, user sessions, and networking events, guided and analysed by WWJ Chief Editor Daniel Scuka. The agenda (contact us for a full copy) is complete and includes visits to and sessions with some of Tokyo’s hottest mobile players, including carriers, content providers, application developers and technology vendors. Access the full release here. For additional information, fees and registration, access the MIJ site here.

Insider Visit to Tokyo's Hottest Mobile Players

Wireless Watch Japan will produce the third Mobile Intelligence mission to Tokyo, 17-22 April 2005, providing an in-depth study of the success factors, companies and technologies that have boosted Japan’s mobile Internet into the world’s No. 1 position. Full Press Release Here

In the past year, new third-generation (3G) wireless Internet services have won millions of mobile consumer customers with QR bar-code readers, e-wallet-based m-commerce, mobile TV, and CD-quality music downloading all enjoying fast consumer uptake. Furthermore, flat-rate data pricing, convergence between cellular, VoIP and fixed wireless services, and per-event billing are all fundamentally reshaping mobile business models. Nonetheless, as Japan’s carriers perfect their 3G survival strategies, they find that 3G ARPUs are actually higher than on older 2G systems.

Some of Japan's Cool New Apps

In a telephone interview with a research company in Toronto last night, I was asked for examples of the coolest new applications or services in Japan. Without a doubt, I answered, mobile music and the Chaku Uta Full song download services are really eating up packet bandwidth. The week before last, KDDI announced that the cumulative downloads for EZ Chaku Uta Full (provided via the CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN network) had surpassed 3 million as of 1 March 2005, less than four months after the 19 November 2004 launch. The company added that the 1 million and 2 million milestones were achieved on 5 January and 5 February, respectively.

From the WWJ Newsletter. Log in to read full article. To receive WWJ’s free email newsletter, subscribe here.

Livedoor's Takeover Plans

Last Thursday, Takafumi Horie, billed as the guy who “has Japan talking,” was guest lunch speaker at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCCJ) in Tokyo. There has been a lot of coverage lately of his company’s plans to acquire Nippon Broadcasting System, Inc. (Nippon Hoso), a long-established, old-line Japanese media company. WWJ is fast forming the opinion that, whatever the outcome of Livedoor’s takeover bid, the company may not have much of a mobile strategy — a fatal flaw, in our opinion.

Vodafone V603 Models Appeal to 2G Mobilers

WWJ’s director of digital media Lawrence Cosh-Ishii was on the platform at JR Ebisu station on Tokyo’s Yamanote circle line earlier today and spotted a new ad for Vodafone’s V603T (from Toshiba). The Toshiba model and its partner, the V603SH (Sharp), released in February, both feature much-improved analog TV and FM radio functionality and the Sharp model has a built in 3D motion sensor. The ad campaign and the new cellys highlight Vodafone’s continued development of cutting-edge 2G models.

Fixed-line Messaging: Uncommonly Useless?

Telstra said today they will launch text messaging for fixed-line phones, a service that has always struck us here at a WWJ as uncommonly useless. The fundamental characteristic of mobile messaging is that it’s mobile — and the sender can reasonably assume that the receiver will have their phone with them or will at least check their mobile mail within a few minutes or at most hours. A celly is personal, always on and always in your pocket. The asynchronicity between the sender and the receiver is actually a benefit: many mobile mail users choose to send a text message when a voice call might be too disturbing. It’s fine if the receiver reads it and responds within a few minutes or later that morning. (For the full article, access the WWJ Newsletter archives here.)

Mobile Intelligence from CEATEC Japan

Panasonic CEATEC TourIn today’s program, we speak with Yutaka Nakamae from Panasonic’s Corporate External Relations Group who met with us during last fall’s CEATEC consumer electronics show in Tokyo. While there’s plenty of eye candy, including Panny’s 900iV (released in mid-2004), some skin-able models to please those who can’t decide on their favorite color and the very cool GSM X700 (now on sale in Europe), the real intelligence relates to finding our who’s boss in the carrier/manufacturer relationship (Hint: Who owns the customer?). Today’s proggy is not only a fun one — showing some great cellys from the October CEATEC show — but it also reconfirms the reality of the relationship between cell-phone makers and cellular operators in Japan — in this case, Panasonic and DoCoMo.

Big News from FeliCa and Vodafone Japan Trouble Follow-up

From the WWJ newsletter; This week’s news of lasting importance has to be Tuesday’s joint announcement from Sony, JR East and DoCoMo that DoCoMo’s “Mobile FeliCa” and JR East’s “Suica” epayment systems will be merged into a single “Mobile Suica” service. It hasn’t been easy for consumers to keep track of which device to use, where the cash was coming from (their on-card balance, their on-phone balance or other) and where the payment was going to. (For the full article, access the WWJ Newsletter archives here.)

WWJ Newsletter: Latest Issue

On Friday, Yahoo Asia News carried an interesting Kyodo story on mobile spam in Japan. According to the report, Japanese mobilers are being swamped with junk email despite all-out efforts by the cellcos to eliminate the nuisance. Much of the spam (meiwaku) mail advertises adult web sites and is sent in bulk to millions of mobiles from regular spam servers — that’s the, uhmmm, beauty of Japan’s reliance on Net-standard email rather than SMS for mobile messaging.

The latest edition of the WWJ email newsletter is available online here.

DoCoMo 700i 3G Series: We Smell Fear

Sharp's SH 700iYou can think of DoCoMo’s newest handsets as “901i lite.” The cell carrier hopes four, slim 700i handsets will sing and dance their way into ever-stingier consumers’ hearts and wallets. They are packed with would-be FOMA functionality minus the FeliCa e-wallet and could just provide a significant competitive advantage at a time when KDDI and Vodafone are still rushing to market with fully featured 3G battleships that command heavy-duty prices. Sometime-WWJ commentator Ken Gai’s take on the move is that Big D is merely launching a shrewd counter-attack on KDDI/au… and will use this series as launch pad to boost migration to 3G — perhaps even passing KDDI for total 3G subs by Christmas. But WWJ wonders: What else are they afraid of? The 700i-series handsets are packed with FOMA functions: Chaku Uta ring tones, Chaku Motion ring videos, Chara Den (character avatars that project the caller’s image during video calling), Deco-mail (HTML-formatted virtual stickers for decorating mobile email) plus a QVGA LCD screen, Java and Macromedia Flash applications. In fact, these cellys are almost FOMA in all but name.