Nortel and Toshiba have announced an agreement for the joint development of mobile WiMax base stations for Japanese and global markets. In Japan, Nortel and Toshiba jointly participated in the government’s next-generation wireless trial using WiMax solutions, and successfully completed trial service provision in the Tohoku region of northern Japan between December 2006 to March 2007.
Symbian announced their 20 millionth handset sales milestone in Japan with a rather surprising Jekyl-and-Hyde campaign. First off, they ran a Fortune-500-style blitz – dubbed J20 – complete with CEO webcast and predictable press release – so far, so OK. If that was all they did, we’d certainly join in the chorus to congratulate them on a job well done. When any non-domestic entrant achieves 20 million sales of anything, much less ultra-cool Symbian smartphone installations, WWJ offers our heartfelt congratulations and more power to them.
However, at the same time global HQ launched an akward attempt at what seems to be a viral ad. campaign – called BooHooForYou – with a dedicated website and anime themed video posted on YouTube. Since BHFY provides full English text and subtitles in the animation, the obvious target audience for this little stunt are folks outside Japan. The Japanese audio and English subtitles combined give viewers the distinct impression the site was made in Japan to poke fun at (lagging) European and American mobile markets.
Anyone who understands how Japan’s business and wider civil culture operates will tell you that remaining humble – especially when you otherwise have strong reason to brag loudly in public – is not only expected and practiced, but to do the opposite is highly insulting. Thus Symbian’s BHFY comes across as at least culturally inappropriate and at worst directly insulting.
WWJ editors have lived in Japan for several (many?) years, and we’ve watched closely to see how mobile industry players here build, market and protect their reputations and brand images; we can confirm that video comes across as far too condescending, childish and downright tragic in the way it portrays the Japanese as openly gloating “boo hoo for you.” (Subscribers login for the full rant.)
According to reports coming out of the Japanese media it appears that the communications ministry is leaning towards granting new spectrum licenses to Acca Networks Co. and Willcom Inc. to the predictable surprise and disappointment of the four existing operators. In an apparent effort to encourage more competition the ministry plans to allocate frequency by this autumn and expects the new services using the 2.5-gigahertz frequency band to start within three years after the licenses are granted.
NTT DoCoMo has just announced that it will join the Gobi Fund II, a venture capital fund operated by Gobi Partners. The Fund will target companies in China working on the convergence of telecoms, media and technology within the IT and digital media sectors. Investment activities will begin this month. DoCoMo’s decision to enter the Gobi Fund II has been prompted in part by the successful performance of its investment in the Gobi Fund I in December 2003.
Qualcomm has announced that it will host the first-ever MediaFLO Conference in Tokyo to provide the latest information about their mobile broadcast solution. The event will take place on Friday, June 8 at 14:00 at the Hotel Okura with Omar Javaid, vice president, business development, Qualcomm MediaFLO Technologies, providing a global market status presentation. WWJ interviewed Ali Zamari, international business development manager for MediaFLO, at the Wireless Japan tradeshow last year.
According to this report on Reuters, EAccess plans to sell some of its stake in the newly launched eMobile unit to Goldman Sachs. The share sale would also see the firm change from a consolidated subsidiary of EAccess into an affiliate thus reducing losses the parent company would be required to book in group earnings. Emobile also appointed CFO Eric Gan as president and chief operating officer, having been managing director of Goldman before founding the telecom operator.
