IT researcher and consulting firm Gartner Japan has announced sales in Japan of cellular phones between January and June. Sales reached 22,133,100 units, down 8.5% over the same period last year. The company attributes the decline in sales to the fact that demand for camera phones was not as brisk as a year ago. Gartner also reports that W-CDMA phones accounted for almost 15% of total cellphone sales.
Softbank has apparently asked a Tokyo court to block the Japan government’s plan for distributing 3G spectrum to mobile phone operators, saying it would bar new entrants until 2012. The company argued the plan favoured the existing top two mobile phone operators — NTT DoCoMo and KDDI — in the 800-Mhz band used for high-speed wireless services, impeding Softbank’s mobile business plans.
WWJ Editors, 14 October 2004
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The first mobile phone service enabling full-length songs to be downloaded to handsets is to be launched by a Japanese telco group that believes it has found the “killer application” that will transform 3G mobile technology. KDDI, Japan’s second biggest telecoms company, is set to launch the service late next month. Users will be able to choose from 10,000 songs on six websites and download them for the equivalent of a few US dollars, each.
Motorola today announced that it has begun deployment of its CDMA2000 1X solution on a 2GHz network for KDDI, the leading carrier for 3G cellular phone service in Japan. KDDI is expected to commercially roll out innovative data and voice services based on its new 3G network in late October 2004. The new packet-based 2GHz network will allow KDDI to leverage additional bandwidth while offering the opportunity to provide more advanced IP-based feature enhancements to deliver new services to its customers.
President Nakamura faced the Tokyo press on September 30 and did… not too bad a job. In a wide-ranging presentation followed by Q&A, he covered fuel cell R&D (commercialization after FY 2006), Softbank’s moves to obtain 3G spectrum (vacating the spectrum tomorrow “cannot be done”), and Big D’s global strategy (with a dual-mode GSM/W-CDMA handset, you can access both). Nakamura also talked about churn, competition with KDDI/au, and the possibility of abandoning pre-paid services. A post-fall IR Roadshow program that’s not to be missed.
NTT Communications received awards for Best Global Carrier and Best New Service during the sixth annual World Communications Awards held in London on 11 October 2004. NTT Com beat out other global companies including AT&T, BT Global Services, Infonet and MCI to earn the coveted top spot in the prominent category of Best Global Carrier. NTT Com’s achievement represents the first time that an Asian carrier has won in this category.
NTT Advanced Technology has announced a prototype Internet access system for mobile phone users. Hot Access utilizes a cellphone’s infrared communications capability and a fixed-rate broadband network service to enable users to access mobile Internet content without being charged a packet fee. (Have to wonder what DoCoMo thinks about competition from a sister company? — Ed.)
KDDI has just announced yet another 3G handset, dubbed ‘Talby’ [.jpg image], the third from their in-house Au Design Project. This super-slim fashionable unit, styled by Marc Newson, has a built-in antenna and is set to hit store shelves in Japan by December. It’s a Flash-enabled model with a QVGA screen, 2D bar-code reader, and BREW.
The global mobile commerce market excluding mobile entertainment, will become a $40bn industry by 2009, fuelled by a growth in micropayment volumes, according to a new study from Juniper Research. The purchase of tickets (such as car parking and cinema tickets) using the mobile phone, will dominate the growth in m-commerce. Mobile users have started already to show interest in ticketing particularly in Europe and Japan, while in the retail sector, initial applications are geared towards vending machines, but this will see slow growth.
