Emobile launched its so-called “Mobile Broadband” services, 16-months after the ministry awarded their new license, at an opening ceremony held at Bic Camera’s Yurakucho store in Tokyo this weekend. The company put two debut models on sale: its keyboard-equipped EM ONE terminal by Sharp (details here), which allows users to connect at HSDPA speed and view 1Seg digital tv broadcasting, and a card-type model for laptop computers.
According to an article on eMarketer, “What stands out in the Japanese mobile market is the fact that innovation is shifting toward business models and marketing tactics as opposed to technical features and functions … the explosion of non-official mobile content Web sites is causing the sun to set on the i-mode business model of a dominant mobile carrier selling incremental content and services to its user base,” says John du Pre Gauntt, eMarketer senior analyst.
There are several ‘gee-whiz’ statements in this summary, starting with “Marketers are looking to the Japanese mobile market as a model of the converged media future,” which are clearly designed to help sell their research report. However, we really must challenge outright some of the assurances offered. For example, the eMarketer quote above which states that “Innovation is shifting toward business models and marketing tactics as opposed to technical features and functions” is off-base on both counts.
The continued innovations from DoCoMo and the other carriers in network speed, handset design and content & service offerings speak volumes about the Japanese mobile market and the continued utterly fundamental role of the carrier in driving innovation. Granted, the increase in non-official content sites was obvious and predictable, given how easy the continuing carrier-led innovations make getting onto the mobile web for both providers and surfers. And the carriers have known this from Day 1 of i-mode.
If you stop somebody at the streets of Tokyo who is watching digital broadcasting TV on his mobile handset and ask who is his carrier provider, chances are high the answer will be KDDI au. Having started selling its first one-seg model — the Sanyo W33SA (discontinued) — in December 2005, KDDI au expanded its one-seg portfolio to 12 models, resulting in two million units sold as of February 23, 2007. According to GfK Japan, (as quoted in this KDDI press release — Eds) au group has sold more one-seg compatible handsets than its rivals, grabbing 59.96% of the total market share. WWJ has video demo. with one of KDDI’s early 1Seg. enabled models running Here.
eMobile announced their debut package offering – complete with terminals, data cards and flat-rate HSDPA price plan – today at a Tokyo press conference with company representatives joined by notable industry partners including Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm, Darren Huston, CEO of Microsoft Japan, and Masafumi Matsumoto, representative director from Sharp. The upstart carrier’s founder, chairman and CEO, Sachio Semmoto (who was co-founder of DDI, which became KDDI), called their newly introduced Sharp EM-One smartphone, “the next-generation mobile broadband device” – which was “designed to deliver always-on broadband at a reasonable monthly flat-rate price.”
The new Sharp terminal is bound to be popular with the same crowd who lined-up to get Willcom’s Zero3 model, also made by Sharp, in late 2005. The EM-One is a touch-screen qwerty-keyboard dual-slider device sporting a 4-inch LCD screen with Japan’s first WVGA (800×480)-resolution screen and Windows Mobile 5.0 (with all the typical office functions). At only 18mm thin, it even comes ready to watch 1Seg digital TV broadcasts and – according to the specs – the unit sports a Marvell PXA270 cpu running at 520MHz with 512MB of Flash memory and 128MB RAM. Perhaps most interesting are the rather agressive price plans, which bundle the device with fixed- and mobile-broadband connection services to attract new customers.
The company also announced four new data cards including a PC Card unit produced by NEC and a USB design coming from Huawei, which will run on the same high-speed network and tabehoudai all-you-can-eat billing model. The new services will be available starting 31 March in five major population areas including Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka and Kyoto. More details after the jump.
SoftBank Mobile rounded out the Japanese operators spring handset announcement rush this week by announcing a new fleet of models – Flash site Here – with major bling factor. According to the companies announcement most models will be available by March which is traditionally the busiest handset replacement month of the year in Japan as the new academic and fiscal year begins on April 1st. Masayoshi Son did his best Steve Jobs impersonation, black turtle-neck and all, however there was no announcement related to the recent news from MacWorld.
Models of interest include the 911T by Toshiba, a candybar slider with a huge 3-inch screen running on high speed HSDPA has a 3.2-megapixel camera, 1GB of internal memory, 1Seg digital tv, it’s FeliCa m-commerce enabled and comes complete with a pair of Oakley Thumps which connect via bluetooth. Other new handset highlights include; the 812SH Pantone series by Sharp (pictured right) with 20 different colors to choose from, the 812T Kodomobile model designed especially for children and Nokia’s E-61 Communicator – labeled as X01NK – which has Japanese Kanji text input and comes Wi-Fi enabled.
There are three new phones from Samsung including the 708SC slider which claims the title for the worlds thinnest 3G handset at a mere 8.4mm thick and the 707SC Swarovski Crystal version which is a follow-up to the earlier 705SH model [.jpg image] which sold-out the day it was launched last fall.
There have been over 30 new handset models announced by the three main operators during the last week for content and application developers, industry wags and ultimately the marketplace at large to chew over.. whew! WWJ subscribers login for more comments, photos and a video-link to watch the actual presentation (70 minute runtime) from the press conference held in Shinagawa on Thursday.
According to a company press-release today SoftBank mobile will release the first handsets branded with it’s corporate logo (replacing Vodafones) starting Sept. 2nd. The Sharp 705 series 3G phones will be limited to 10,000 units and feature the usual specs. with 2 mega-pix. camera, ASV display and bluetooth on-board. They have also released images of the popular 1Seg digital TV enabled 905 model, made by Sharp as well, with the SoftBank logo however no details were provided about it’s availability.
The good folks over at CIAJ (Communications and Information Network of Japan) issued a press item last week to announce results of their annual study on cellular phone use. According to CIAJ, “The study aims to capture on-going changes in the domestic mobile communications market and has been conducted since 1998.”
The study includes some interesting results related to actual usage of mobile Internet services, including email, music, GPS, mobile TV, e-wallets, number portability and more. The organization says they mailed questionnaires to 600 cellular phone users (male: 303, female: 297; by age group, under 20: 102, twenties: 101, thirties: 108, forties: 95, fifties: 95, sixties and above: 99) residing in the larger Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas from the end of March through April, 2006…
SoftBank announced that it has established a new company, Mobile Media Planning Corp., which aims to conduct technical research on MediaFLO and plan new services utilizing such technology. Developed by QUALCOMM, the system enables distribution of multichannel broadcast optimized for mobile communications, including Clipcast, and distribute digital terrestrial broadcasts to mobile terminals and other devices. This technology is considered as one of the three major technologies following satellite broadcast and 1Seg broadcast, and it enables real time broadcast of 20 channels on one TV channel portion of frequency band (6MHz). We interviewed MediaFlo’s Ali Zamari during the recent Wireless Japan trade-show in Tokyo.
Mobile Media Planning plans to provide digital-tv broadcast distribution services for mobile terminals and other devices utilizing such technology for the development of mobile communications business of the SOFTBANK Group. Also, Mobile Media Planning will work on the study of technical potential of MediaFLO, by participating in the activities organized by external parties such as the VHF/UHF-band efficient use working group in Information and Communications Council, which discusses the proposal of multimedia broadcast technology including MediaFLO, and FLO Forum where supporting enterprises from around the world, such as QUALCOMM, participate.
Last week saw an interesting double play for mobile devices in Japan as both NTT DoCoMo and Willcom announced new phones — DoCoMo’s 7-Series — or new PDAs — Sharp’s oddly named W-Zero3[es]. These, combined with the continuing speculation on the this fall’s entry of RIM’s Blackberry email device (will it have Japanese text input capability?), made it a busy week for wireless watchers.
On Tuesday, WWJ was first on the Web with a full report and images of DoCoMo’s new 7-Series, a mix of models from Sharp, Panasonic, NEC and Mitsubishi, as well as from US maker Motorola…
Willcom, Microsoft and Sharp have introduced their next generation smartphone. The Zero3 [es] is powered by Intel’s PXA270 CPU at 416MHz, with 128MB of flash memory and 64MB of SDRAM. In addition to the Windows Mobile 5.0 (Japanese) operating system, the phone also comes with the Opera mobile browser and Flash pre-installed. It has a 1.3-megapixel camera, miniSD removable memory, a USB 2.0 port and QR code reader. According to the press release, they are working on seperate W-Fi, Bluetooth and 1Seg TV tuner cards to be released at a later date.
