KDDI is pleased to announce that the au cellular service provided by KDDI and Okinawa Cellular Telephone exceeded 15 million subscribers as of Friday, August 15. In April 1999, the former IDO Corporation and former DDI Cellular group completed the deployment of a nationwide cdmaOne network, and started providing a seamless nationwide cellular service to customers.
In Shibuya – the heart of Japan’s wireless revolution – the mobile Internet is high-tech, uber sophisticated, and cutting-edge. It’s also… Irish. Normally, we wouldn’t make much fuss over three Ireland-based outsiders trying to break into the mobile market here, but one of them – e-settlement software developer Network365 – recently inked a break-through deal with the local heavyweight, NTT DoCoMo; the other two (Parthus Ceva and Polar Lake) also appear to have some real prospects. Our program provides an interesting, behind-the-scenes look at how out-of-town players are making a dent in Japan’s mobile market. Full Program Run-time 19:27
The Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) announced that the number of mobile phones (cellular phones, in-car phones, and PHS products) shipped in Japan in June was 4,878,000 units, a 19.4% increase over the same month the previous year.
DoCoMo and its eight regional subsidiaries announced today that the companies will limit the number of e-mail i-mode(R) users can send to 1,000 messages per day, beginning October 20, 2003. The move is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to counter the growing amount of spam mail being sent via the i-mode network.
Online market researcher Info Plant conducted a survey of 20,046 i-mode users (male 34.6%, female 65.4%) on use of the Internet between July 28 and August 4. Of the respondents, 80.2% use a PC to access the Internet. Of the company owners, people in management positions, and students, more than 90% access the Internet from a PC.
KDDI’s local subsidiary in China, KDDI Shanghai will establish a sales office in Wuxi City Jiangsu Province, and KDDI China will establish another sales office in Dalian City, Liaoning Province. These new offices, combined with the existing offices of the KDDI group, will enable KDDI to cover 80% of those areas in China that have Japanese companies based in them. Therefore KDDI will be able to respond quickly to the communications needs of client companies.
No. 1 mobile phone maker Nokia, planning an aggressive push into video gaming, on Tuesday said it has signed a deal to acquire some assets of Japanese game maker Sega Corp. dedicated to networked game play. Nokia will use the SNAP technology for wireless game matching for its N-Gage phone/game deck combo device, set to be released worldwide on Oct. 7.
As the use of mobile cameras has spread west from Japan, it has been the dark side of photo-messaging that has grabbed headlines. A tsunami of moral panic has followed the adoption in Europe and the US of camera mobiles, focusing mostly on their lewd, pornographic potential or the simple invasion of privacy.
We spent an afternoon at the Symbian Workshop in Tokyo recently and chatted with Nokia’s Gerard Bruen, Director of Series 60 and Alliance Partners. Tune in for a surprisingly candid discussion about what the big push was for this event.. “the Japanese market is sophisticated, the developers have a good understanding, there is a good eco-system already built around financially stable developers and content owners and we should utilize that.. Nokia has the reach to go global, and to take them global”. A must see interview for wireless developers everywhere who are planning their mobile business strategy.
IP Talk Corp is a telecom carrier under the wing of Mitsubishi Electric Corp and it provides an Internet phone service called “IP Talk.” After developing a prototype of a voice over IP (VoIP) mobile phone using wireless LAN in 2002, the company unveiled a plan to start a “wireless IP phone service,” which enables use of IP Talk on the street via wireless LAN access services, within 2003.
