Year: <span>2005</span>
Year: 2005

NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records Japan

NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records JapanIn a deal that puts a new spin on mobile music promotion in the Japanese market, DoCoMo announced a partnership with Tower Records Japan opting to buy 42 percent of the music retailer for 12.8 billion yen ($109 million). Scheduled to go through by late November, the deal will make DoCoMo Tower’s single largest shareholder. The music retailer operates 78 Tower Records stores and 31 Wave music outlets. Tower’s motto in Japan is "The Best Place to Find Music" but will DoCoMo find it the best place to create musical revenue?

Taking the stage at a Tokyo press conference November 8th, Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s multimedia services department, and Hiroyuki Fushitani, president and chief executive officer of Tower Records Japan, gave the press few details on their upcoming fusion of telecom and music marketing. Not surprisingly, projects center around DoCoMo’s Osaifu Ketai (mobile wallet) platform for 3G handsets. Users will be able to wave their mobile phones over displays at Tower stores to download coupons or purchase CDs, picking them up at the sales counter on their way out. From this winter phones equipped with DoCoMo’s ToruCa (toru, capture; Ca, card) information-capture service will include Tower reader/writer units to download news on favorite artists, special offers from music labels, ticket reservations, and other music-related information. Tower’s popular redeemable purchase point system will also migrate onto mobile phones.

KDDI's New Trio of 3G handsets

KDDI's New Trio of 3G handsets Japan’s KDDI is promoting three new handsets coming out later this month that they believe mix fun with functionality for a package of business and entertainment features.

The W33SA from Sanyo, W32T by Toshiba and Kyocera’s A5515K each pack a push-to-talk style function. The trio of handsets comes equipped with Hello Messenger, a live audio-chat style service for up to five people that supports voice, image and text simultaneously. Twelve original cartoon-style avatars by well-known Japanese illustrator Kohei Yamashita will frolic on screen as stand-ins for chat members who can type or talk through the conversation over the handsets.

Targeted at young, female users, chat members register each other’s number in their handset to get started. Prices for the service of course vary depending on if subscribers have a flat rate package or not. If not then there is a charge incurred for sending photos or data. A special introductory rate for the audio portion of Hello Messenger until April, for example, will be 1.05 yen per 20 seconds. Scheduled to start service in late November.

Softbank Trials Pressure DoCoMo

DoCoMo competitor BB Mobile, a SOFTBANK Group company, LG Electronics (LGE) and Nortel have demonstrated wireless "triple play" – the ability to deliver simultaneous broadband voice, video and data services – across multiple wireless broadband access technologies. The BB Mobile, LGE and Nortel tests were conducted across BB Mobile’s live trial HSDPA 3G cellular network and LGE and Nortel’s pre-WiMAX (802.16e) and WLAN networks in Japan’s Saitama prefecture, located northwest of Tokyo. The demonstration also included Nortel’s Multimedia Communication Server 5100, which delivers SIP-based multimedia and collaborative applications to end users.

NTT DoCoMo Pulls Out of KPN

NTT DoCoMo announced today it has transferred its interest in Dutch telecommunications company KPN Mobile N.V. (KPNM) to KPNM’s corporate parent, Koninklijke KPN N.V. (KPN), while continuing the licensing of its i-mode® technology to KPNM.

Please Remove that Email List

Yesterday’s Japan Times reported that a web site in Guam temporarily allowed access to a list of some 320,000 DoCoMo email addresses. NTT DoCoMo asked the offending company to take the list of the Net, which it did. How does a site operator in Guam (a US territory) get their grubby hands on several hundred thousand DoCoMo email addys? And why simply make them public (rather than reselling them)? And what’s happening with the list now? Some Monday mobile madness we thought you wouldn’t want to miss…

'Conbini' Stores Cash in on Bills to Pay

Convenience stores are ringing up a mountain of profit on something they don’t even have to keep in stock: bill paying. In fact, so many people now use convenience stores to pay utility bills and some taxes that the volume handled approaches that of Japan’s megabanks. Though the commission on each transaction is small — about the same 50- to 60-yen profit as on an onigiri rice ball — they add up. For example, Lawson Inc. recorded 6.77 bn yen in commissions for fiscal 2004.