<span class="vcard">editors</span>
editors

Motorola and RIM Rolling in – SoftBank a No-Show?

Last week saw an interesting double play for mobile devices in Japan as both NTT DoCoMo and Willcom announced new phones — DoCoMo’s 7-Series — or new PDAs — Sharp’s oddly named W-Zero3[es]. These, combined with the continuing speculation on the this fall’s entry of RIM’s Blackberry email device (will it have Japanese text input capability?), made it a busy week for wireless watchers.

On Tuesday, WWJ was first on the Web with a full report and images of DoCoMo’s new 7-Series, a mix of models from Sharp, Panasonic, NEC and Mitsubishi, as well as from US maker Motorola…

Softbank Shares Fall on Merrill Rating

Shares of Softbank Corp., the company that bought Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese mobile phone unit, had their biggest drop in a month after Merrill Lynch & Co. told investors to sell the stock and forecast a loss this fiscal year. Softbank, the worst performer this year on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, slid as much as 7 percent in Tokyo. Merrill analyst Yasumasa Goda said in a note today the company will have a 7.1 billion yen ($62 million) net loss, compared with a forecast for a 30 billion yen profit by Toyo Keizai, a financial information publisher.

DoCoMo Working Towards Super 3G

DoCoMo has just announced that starting today it will accept proposals from suppliers for development of equipment for Super 3G base stations and handsets. DoCoMo will select one or more suppliers for each of these categories around October and aims to complete the technology with the selected suppliers before the end of 2009. The Super 3G standard is expected to provide superfast downlink data rates of over 100Mbps and uplink data rates of over 50Mbps, low-latency data transmission, and improved spectrum efficiency.

Japan tops list of lowest monthly broadband prices

Japan came second, after South Korea, in terms of access to digital communications technology, while having the lowest monthly broadband prices, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Telecommunication Union.

Editor’s note: WWJ will try and get our hands on a copy of this report; the ranking would change, no doubt, if broadband access via mobile were considered. We strongly suspect Japan would still rank as one of the cheapest on a cost-per-megabyte for traffic basis, exclusive of content fee.

Another Smartphone Soon Via Willcom

Willcom, Microsoft and Sharp have introduced their next generation smartphone. The Zero3 [es] is powered by Intel’s PXA270 CPU at 416MHz, with 128MB of flash memory and 64MB of SDRAM. In addition to the Windows Mobile 5.0 (Japanese) operating system, the phone also comes with the Opera mobile browser and Flash pre-installed. It has a 1.3-megapixel camera, miniSD removable memory, a USB 2.0 port and QR code reader. According to the press release, they are working on seperate W-Fi, Bluetooth and 1Seg TV tuner cards to be released at a later date.

DoCoMo to Launch Mobile Auction Service

NTT DoCoMo and Rakuten Inc., the operator of Japan’s leading online shopping mall, will develop a mobile phone Internet auction system and begin operating it from autumn, company officials said. The system will allow customers to use cameras on their mobile phones to take photos of goods and put them up for auction. Users can also use the “Osaifu Keitai” (wallet phone) system to make payment for goods they buy. DoCoMo holds about a 40 percent stake in Rakuten Auction.

More Internet Users Mobile than Wired in Japan

The number of Internet users in Japan accessing from cellphones exceeded those using it from personal computers in 2005, according to a government report published Tuesday. At the end of the year there were 69.2 million people using the Internet from mobile devices, compared to 66 million conventional PC users, the Ministry of Information and Communications’ annual “Information and Communications in Japan” white paper said.

Europe's Highest Phone Charges

IRISH phone users are paying the highest bills in Europe, it was revealed last night. Both mobile and fixed-line rental charges are almost twice the EU average, according to new figures. Vodafone, with profits last year of more than E45billion, claims that its Irish revenues are the highest anywhere in the world, except Japan.

(Sort of makes you wonder why they sold out to Son… — Ed.)

Motorola Razr, Designer Phones in DoCoMo 3G Summer 7-Series

Motorola Razr, Designer Phones in DoCoMo 3G Summer 7-SeriesDoCoMo today announced six summer 3G handsets, including ‘7-Series’ models from US maker Motorola, Sharp, NEC, Panasonic and Mitsubishi. The Japan-made models include three ‘designer’ phones, with ultracool shapes and colours conceived by noted Japanese design personalities, while Motorola joins the show with their M702iS and M702iG — the latter evidently based on the newest version of the widely popular ‘RAZR’ series, the Razr V3X.

The company unveiled the phones at a flashy press event held at the Harajuku Quest event space in central Tokyo. The three designer models, from Mitsubishi, Panasonic and NEC, offer a range of trendy colors including ‘lilac mirage’ and ’round coral’, and feature square, oval and bevel shapes based on the clam-shell form factor. DoCoMo’s choice of outside designers to create custom models is neither the first for the carrier nor for Japan and continues a popular (and lucrative) trend long developed by KDDI and Vodafone.

All phones unveiled today include, in varying mixes, the carrier’s stripped-down ‘3G-lite’ voice and data services, including roaming, ‘Chaku-moji’ (which lets the caller enter a short message that will appear on the receiver’s phone as it rings), network phonebook backup, network lock-out of a lost phone, Deco-mail (HTML mail), i-Channel and music playback. But while the carrier presented the phones as the unified ‘7-Series’, there are significant differences between the domestic and US models. The Motorolas fail to provide all of the signature lite FOMA services (lost phone lockout, PushTalk, removable memory) but they do roam, while the Japanese models don’t roam.

Japan Telecom Forms Mobile Division

Japan Telecom and Vodafone K.K. just announced they have formed a new Mobile Business Division aligned with Vodafone K.K.’s Corporate Sales to jointly conduct business activities. The move stems from an organizational change made on 1 July 2006 to align with Vodafone K.K. Corporate Sales to strengthen mobile solutions and realize FMC. Previously Japan Teleco focused mainly on ICT solutions for business customers. However, in order to maximize business synergies with Vodafone K.K., which recently was recently aquired by SoftBank Group, the main functions of Vodafone K.K.’s Corporate Sales division have been aligned with Japan Telecom’s.