Year: <span>2007</span>
Year: 2007

Year: 2007

Napster Japan – The First Six Months

On October 3 of last year, Napster Japan launched the first online music subscription service in Japan with an ‘all-you-can-eat’ model – allowing subscribers to download and play as much music as they like for a flat monthly fee. Accompanied by a massive marketing campaign featuring oversized bar-code poster ads, the Napster Japan launch attracted a great deal of attention and media coverage. When the company announced that over 2 million songs had been ‘shifted’ (downloaded for playing) in the first week after launch, it looked as though Napster might well be on track to replace iTunes as Japan’s most popular online music service. So how have the first six months gone for Japan’s first and (so far) only online subscription music service?

KDDI to Launch U.S. Operations

This article by the Asahi Shimbun, stating that KDDI will launch services on Sprint Nextels network, has created alot of buzz across the web in the last 24hrs. According to that story the company “… has obtained a business license to serve as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in 49 of the 50 U.S. states”. While of course it makes perfect sense to us for KDDI to consider how they might port the lessons learned here into other developing markets, the details provided from this original source raised more questions than they answered. The Asahi quotes un-named officials, no announcement appears on either of the carriers websites, saying that “KDDI Mobile” will begin offering full-scale services in the U.S. by mid-April.

Japan Mobile Subscriber Statistics

The Telecommunication Carriers Assoc. (TCA) released their official updated Japan mobile subscriber details (see graphic on our left nav.) for the month ending March 2007. While we had mentioned several times recently that March is the traditional handset replacement month, even WWJ was impressed to see the volume of activity achieved. KDDI’s AU brand continued to show the way with a net increase of 530,000 while DoCoMo, with their latest models line-up becoming more widely available, added a respectable 298,000 new contracts. SoftBank Mobile reported a total gain of 127,000 compared to only 63,000 year-on-year for March 2006 when the company was still running as Vodafone. By far the most interesting numbers relate to the continued migration towards 3G.

DoubleClick Japan Buys Mobile ASP

DoubleClick Japan recently announced they have aquired a domestic mobile CMS integration service provider, Mo-on, without releasing specific terms of the deal. Nextway Co. Ltd designed this ASP service, which provides a web browser-based system complete with various admin. tools, so small to medium sized companies could easily build and maintain new mobile website offerings. According to their press release, the division posted ¥526mln in sales FYE 2006 with ¥18mln profit and noted that the business transfer date is scheduled for October 1st, 2007.

PSP Phone by Sony Ericsson

The rumor mills are swirling again about the long storied dream evolution of Sony porting their popular PlayStation Portable brand to a next-gen. handset. We picked-up this article posted on a Spanish blog suggesting an ‘Insiders Report’ claimed the device is actually in the works. While would not be surprised it would be better to dig a more qualified source. That being said, in fact WWJ had pondered the concept in June 2006 with our Viewpoint “Gaming Set to Repeat Mobile Music Success“, basically stating not if but when.

Is Mobile 2.0 Really Just Hype?

Paul Golding at Wireless Wanders posted an interesting op-ed about the hype surrounding mobile 2.0. While it’s clear that he’s looking at this from a Euro/US perspective – especially on the device side – however, we have no doubt there are some valid points contained therein. At the same time it should be also noted that Impress R&D (div. of the major Tokyo-based publisher) released a book last summer called Mobile 2.0 [in Japanese] which would likely shed a little more light on what is actually possible, at least in Japan.