Year: <span>2006</span>
Year: 2006

Year: 2006

KDDI in PR Blitz

KDDI has just added a few tasty tidbits on their recent announcements: the new W43S handset by Sony Ericsson is ready to roll as of Friday, 15 September, and they will have some interesting new BREW titles (including mobile multiplayers) on display at next week’s Tokyo Game Show. As an apparent counter measure to the free iPod Nano ‘bribe’ just announced by SoftBank Mobile, KDDI has also introduced the new “Large Satisfaction Campaign,” which will offer a variety of prizes for new users.. whew!

SoftBank Announces – Almost – iPhone

To celebrate the upcoming official re-branding of Vodafone KK to SoftBank Mobile, due for 1 October, we just received a press release [.PDF in Japanese] announcing the company will offer – starting today – a free 2-GB iPod nano to customers who buy their 705sh handset. We expected to hear more from the folks in Shiodome about their mobile number portability battle plan and this looks like a good start. We also should point out that Vodafone have already been selling the best example of an iPhone, the V803T by Toshiba, in Japan for well over a year now.

DoCoMo Aquires Fuel-Cell Stake

DoCoMo announced today they will form a business and capital alliance with Aquafairy Co. to develop fuel-cell products. DoCoMo will acquire an approximate 36.5-percent stake in the company through a purchase of newly allocated shares in the near future. Aquafairy, which develops and markets micro fuel cells for mobile devices, was established in Osaka in 2006 and has 11 employees. It has capital of 33 million yen.

eAccess to Borrow DoCoMo Network

Japan’s eAccess Ltd. said on Monday its wireless unit will borrow its bigger rival NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s network to offer a nationwide cellphone service. eAccess’ mobile unit will roam on DoCoMo’s network in areas outside the major cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. The agreement will helps eAccess launch a nationwide voice service in March 2008 before completing its own network. Prior to the nationwide mobile phone service, eAccess aims to offer wireless data service in March 2007.

Qualcomm Funds P2P Mobile Commerce

We’re pleased to see that OboPay has closed its second round of funding lead by $7 mn from none other than Qualcomm! That would indicate it’s quite likely we’ll see a strong push for their BREW-based P2P mobile commerce application in the future. This news also seems to be at least somewhat disruptive to the existing embedded IC chip effort lead by Sony and Phillips. As both KDDI/au and Vodafone (almost SoftBank Mobile) are running on Qualcomm’s chipset in Japan, this development might present them with a viable alternative to paying license fees to FeliCa Networks as well…

Sony Ericsson W43S Light & Color Fashion

Seems we were not on the VIP invitation list, at least NikkeiBP made it, to attend this recent Tokyo Fashion Show event featuring the latest styles targeted at Ginza shoppers here for fall 2006. However, the Sony Ericsson W43S was front and center with the all girl hip-hop group YA-KYIM on the catwalk singing their signature theme for the handsets new TV ad campaign.