Editor’s Note
Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Contracts Near 80 mil. in Feb.

The total number of mobile phone and personal handy-phone system (PHS) subscription contracts has neared 80 million, with the number standing at 79.85 million at the end of February, up 0.5% from the previous month, a telecommunications association said Friday. In terms of the three main mobile phone companies, the NTT DoCoMo Inc. group had 43.23 million mobile phone contracts, followed by the KDDI Corp. group at 13.72 million and the J-Phone Co. group at 13.62 million, it said.

Analysis: Japan's Megapixel Phones Eye Digital Cameras' Turf

Japan’s cell phone makers, pioneers of the camera-equipped handset, look set to intrude into digital camera makers’ turf as a fierce battle for market share draws them toward photo-phones with million-pixel resolution. No one is yet consigning digital cameras to the high-tech scrap heap, but some of the dozen or so handset makers that crowd the Japanese market are preparing to launch “megapixel” photo phones this year with picture quality good enough to make prints.

DoCoMo's i-mode Gets 2nd Chance In Europe

If at first you don’t succeed, then try again – or so says NTT DoCoMo. I-mode, NTT’s mobile multimedia messaging service, was launched in Germany, Holland and Belgium almost a year ago by network operator KPN NV (KPN), but consumers weren’t keen. Now, the Japanese mobile network operator is launching i-mode in France and Spain, and is hoping this second European push succeeds.

Online News in Japan: Popular, but Not Profitable

Japan’s largest newspaper Web sites get hundreds of millions of page views per month. But many new media pioneers are still unsure where news sites fit into the media mix in Japan — and whether they’ll ever make a profit. A man walks by a bank in Osaka just as it erupts into flames. He pulls out a camera-equipped cell phone — one of 10 million in use in Japan — and snaps a photo.

J-Phone Launches Loco Guide

J-Phone said that on March 3 it will launch “Loco Guide,” a new service that utilizes the J-Sky mobile Internet to bring a broad range of local information to customers based on their current location. Loco Guide searches for location-specific contents so users can quickly obtain information on transportation, restaurants, leisure spots, banks, hospitals, and other services. Previously users had to search different J-Sky content services to obtain location-specific information. However, with Logo Guide, users can now access the contents of multiple sites simultaneously, thereby eliminating the inconvenience of searching different sites to find relevant information.

Electronics Makers Lead the Charge in Quest for Longer Battery Life

But trouble is looming for the battery world. While lithium-ion batteries represent today’s cutting edge, the gadgetry that depends on them is advancing more quickly than the power technology. As mobile devices take on richer features, battery life has become a key issue for gadget developers, and now manufacturers need to go one better than lithium-ion, in both size and energy output.

Sprint Sanyo vs. DoCoMo Panasonic: Another Disappointed Returnee

WWJ sr. contributing editor Michael Thuresson, recently returned to Los Angeles to join the LA Business Journal editorial staff, sent in a user-level review of his new Sanyo handset that he uses on the Sprint network: The faceplate looks almost exactly like my old i-appli Panasonic DoCoMo model, but the thing is three times as thick and it is much heavier. This makes it hard to tuck the phone in my front shirt pocket – the left side of my shirt is tugged down by the weight. Based on my experience of trying to download ring tones, I have to say Sprint’s user interface is disappointing.

Mobile Phone Industry in a Spot

Tens of billions of dollars are riding on the future of fast, mobile Internet services, but industry leaders leaving the world’s top wireless trade show still struggle to justify the investment. At the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, the 28,000 visitors as usual overloaded the local mobile phone network, underlining that the industry still faces basic problems as it seeks to rekindle sales with advanced data services.