Year: <span>2003</span>
Year: 2003

Year: 2003

Java Mobile Marketing for GM Opel

Java Mobile Marketing for GM OpelOne of the little-reported stories from Japan’s wireless webs is how companies big and small are using mobile for marketing, sales support, and CRM. Today, WWJ goes behind the scenes for a never-before-seen preview of the Java-based m-marketing system built for major auto maker GM’s Opel brand by Tokyo-based BeTrend Corp. Based on a custom version of BeTrend’s BeatCast engine and due to launch next month, the system provides customer support, sales and marketing information – and cool pics of the newest cars. Japan mobile at its most sophisticated – and sublime!

Mass e-mailer ordered to pay 6.5 mil. yen compensation

An Internet service firm has been ordered to fork out over 6.5 million yen to cell phone operator NTT DoCoMo after it sent millions of e-mails to nonexistent addresses, inflicting expenses on the operator. Ruling that NTT DoCoMo had suffered losses because of the mass e-mailing, the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday ordered the unidentified Internet service firm to pay 6.56 million yen in compensation.

Focusing on Camera-Phone Apps & Let's Put a Celly in Every Back Pocket

Look how traditional chemical photo service providers have realigned themselves to handle digi prints; this is a new and growing line of business. With DoCoMo’s 505-series i-modes phones (due to hit the market early summer), handsets will have very high-quality, mega-pixel-class cameras, so cam-phone users will want to buy more of the services that digi-cam users have already been buying – like kiosk printing. And to those who would cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war I reply: cry freedom – and put a keitai in every back pocket.

Disney Dour on US Mobile; Games Don't Rock; Users Don't Use

Disney Internet Group is not expecting its US operations to approach its success in Japan anytime in the near future, one of their executives told me. The guess here is that things will change when color phones saturate the market. One in every three cell phones in the US will have a color display within 6 months, according to Seamus McAteer at Zelos Group, a San Francisco-based technology consulting firm.

Need a Bus Ticket? Use Your Cell Phone

Travelers on some long distant bus routes will be able to pay fares using cellular phones from the end of this month, thanks to a tie-up between Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and bus firms. The electronics giant aims to introduce the ticketless service on about 80 routes operated by 40 firms during fiscal 2003 and hopes to extend it to theater and other ticketing in the future.