Japan’s Sanyo is selling its mobile phone business to Kyocera as part of its ongoing restructuring, the company has announced. The two companies have been working on the deal since fall last year. As part of the agreement Kyocera will be able to use the Sanyo brand on cell phones sold in Japan and North America, Sanyo’s main markets.
Mobile Content Networks (MCN) announced the launch of allwords a new mobile content advertising network that enables mobile content providers to purchase all keywords in popular vertical content categories (music, images, games, shopping, etc) in order to increase user traffic, clickthrus, and conversions. Mobile network operators and portals also benefit from an important new revenue opportunity associated with the sale of category based keyword advertising.
Japan will start licensing cellphone “sommeliers” to help guide consumers through complicated functions as mobile telephones become ever more advanced. The communications ministry said it would support a private-sector plan to launch an exam to license specialists who sell cellphones.
DeNA Co., Ltd. announced [in Japanese] that it has decided to establish a new wholly owned subsidiary in the U.S., The subsidiary will be established in California with capital amount of USD 500,000 in January 2008. The subsidiary, DeNA Global Inc., will be engaged in provision of mobile services in the U.S. market according to this note found via Reuters Finance.
According to various local media Twitter will enter the Japanese market in the spring. One interesting post indicates that they are working with Digital Garage, who has made a small investment, and will help localize the service. Also noted was that Twitter founder, Evan Williams, revealed late last year that 20% of their users are – already – based in Japan!
Based on an increasing concern for clients under 18 with mobile data plans who currently may access adult related content SoftBank Mobile has announced the upcoming implimentation of their “Yahoo Kids” content filter option. According to the announcement; “Web use limitation” is a function to limit the access to specific URL’s based on net star Ltd.’s list classification standard. The category that becomes an object is as follows: Unlawfulness, adult, meeting, gambling, grotesqueness, and occult. Apparently, there are certain official contents that will become inaccessible when the filter is in place.
JiJi Press is reporting that Japan mobile market leader DoCoMo slipped to third place in annual mobile phone subscriber growth, for the first time, in 2007 based on TCA data released Thursday. Industry-wide subscribers grew 5.9 pct year-on-year with DoCoMo still holding a commanding lead in market share of 52.9 pct, followed by KDDI with 29.4 pct and Softbank with 17.5 pct.
DoCoMo announced today that subscribers to their i-channel news service surpassed 15 million on January 3, 2008. The achievement came nine months after surpassing 10 million subscribers and two years and three months after the service’s launch (WWJ video). The monthly cost of the service is 150 yen and there is no extra charge for headlines sent to the subscriber phone’s standby screen, but packet charges apply when detailed content is viewed.
Sony has announced “TransferJet”, a new Close Proximity Wireless Transfer Technology enabling the high speed transfer of large data files (photos, HD images, etc.) between electronic devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras, digital video cameras, computers and TVs. Using this technology, data can be sent at speeds of 560Mbps. Sony will present reference exhibits of this newly developed technology at CES International, to be held in Las Vegas from January 7th.
According to a new report released by the Mobile Consumer Lab and Mind Commerce, Google’s Android is the first legitimate attempt to re-create the success of Japan’s “Wireless Ecosystem” model within the context and realities of international mobile markets. Using the lessons learned from within Japan’s best-in-class Wireless Ecosystem framework, this report identifies five fundamental challenges which threaten Google’s mobile dreams and establishes four required milestones for the Open Handset Alliance to achieve in order to effectively compete within the global mobile industry.
