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Obon in Japan = Slow News Cycle

For those of you who don’t know, the middle of August is Obon season in Japan and traditionally the slowest news cycle for the year. Most folks plan their vacation – to beat the heat – around this time and your loyal WWJ team is looking forward to catching up on some outstanding projects behind the scenes. Meanwhile, here are a couple of interesting notes we missed recently from the Nikkei related to the continued growth trend of mobile manga and the iPhone launch results.

DoCoMo Plans to End 2G Services

DoCoMo has announced that it will stop accepting applications for its 2G ‘Mova’ mobile service as of November 30. Without stating when it would turn-out the lights on their legacy PDC network it would seem possible that it will happen by Q4 of fiscal 2008, therefore March 31 2009. It’s the end of an era!

CIAJ Releases Mobile Usage Survey

Since 1998 the CIAJ has conducted an annual study of mobile phone use in Japan and has released this year’s survey results. This report strives to capture the most recent user trends and has added topics which might forcast growth demand in the domestic market, including: handset replacement cycle trends after the implementation of the new purchasing plans, ownership of multiple devices and consumer interest in new services and functions, such as video use. The full report is available Here.

Fujitsu Building WiMAX from Taiwan

Fujitsu Global Mobile Platform Inc., a joint venture established based on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) tied between Fujitsu Limited’s former LSI business, and the Institute for Information Industry of Taiwan, have announced the commencement of operations, according to this press release. FMPI will develop reference designs – designs which improve design efficiencies – for WiMAX-related products for Taiwan-based ODM vendors, in addition to providing technical support.

Mobaho to Cease Broadcast Operations

Mobile Broadcasting Corp. has just announced that it will wind down operations of it’s Mobaho! satellite digital services by spring 2009. According to the press release the company face difficult market conditions for it’s subscription model in direct competition with the freely available 1Seg television offerings. Apparently the TU media (subsidiary of SK Telecom) partners based in Korea will continue operations. As Toshiba owns nearly 37% of the venture it is estimated a potential $250M write-down could affect the companies forcasted earnings for fiscal 2008.

DoCoMo Reports 1Q Earning Results

NTT DoCoMo released it’s first quarter earnings for this fiscal year showing a mixed bag of results. While the YoY net income is up from $1.2B to a healthy $1.7B, attributed in part to cost cutting on handset subsidies, the blended ARPU indicates a continued downward trend due to increased competition. Full details [.PDF in English] are available Here.

Suica Comes Pre-Installed on KDDI

KDDI and Japan Rail have announced their new campaign to help encourage AU customers with the adoption of Suica. The summer handset series includes six models which have the RFID application pre-installed in an effort to enable users to start using their handsets a the preferred payment device at Suica enabled locations. We’d say that’s a full swing opposite from early days when JR required folks to have a View credit-card in order to get Suica onto their phones!

Face Recognition Advertising System

According to this article NEC has developed a system using a face recognition technology that determines the general attributes of a person standing in front of a digital display and outputs advertisements, according to their profile, to the persons FeliCa-enabled handset. NEC calls this system the “Digital Signage Solution,” combining their advertisement delivery and display system with their advertising value measurement system.

Bandai Introduces SmartBerry Handset

Bandai Introduces SmartBerry HandsetBandai, famous for the ’90’s Tamagochi craze, has introduced their new SmartBerry Communicator device. Targeted at young girls, this slider styled touch screen unit offers profile personalization – a virtual business card with blood type and birthdate as given examples – to be shared with trusted friends via real email, including photo attachments and emoji icons of course, with instant chat and multi-player gaming functions, just to name a few.

Available starting this weekend, for about $100, the company has forcasted moving 100,000 units in Japan by spring 2009.

You have to wonder how long it will be before the folks at Mattel catch-up with something like this for Barbie Girls too.. Egad! More details after the jump.

Wireless Japan 2008 at Tokyo Bigsite

The 14th annual Wireless Japan conference and exhibition is set to kick-off at Tokyo Bigsite for 3 full days next week (wOOt!) focused on current and future mobile industry challenges and opportunities. EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN 2008 will cover the fundamental technology that maintains the wireless broadband network and explore recent trends in standardization, hot applications and solutions for wireless network technology. Of course WWJ will be there as we have been in years past.