NTT DoCoMo today announced consolidated financial results for the company and its subsidiaries for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006. According to the companies published highlights: operating revenues were down 1.6%, operating income was up 6.2%, income before taxes was off 26.1% and net income was down 18.3% year-on-year (link for the full 47-page report is available after log-in).
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and KDDI Corp. announced they will jointly set up a bank that will offer money transfer, settlement and other financial services through mobile phones. BTMU and the “au” mobile phone operator have agreed to establish a preparatory company, possibly in May. Japan’s first Internet-based bank designed for handset users is expected to start operations in early 2007, they said. [Thus confirming our earlier post here on 13 April — Eds]
Japan’s largest electronics component maker Kyocera Corp said its net profit in the year to March 2006 (FY05) surged 52 pct and it expects a further improvement this year thanks to a turnaround in demand for digital consumer products. Kyocera also pointed to a major improvement in profitability at its US cellular phone handset-making unit, Kyocera Wireless.
Vodafone K.K. just announced that today’s Extraordinary General Meeting and Board of Directors Meeting saw the company officially appoint a new slate of directors and executive officers, who assume their posts effective today. Masayoshi Son is now Representative Executive Officer, President & CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of, the soon to be former, Vodafone K.K. (Subscribers login for full details on the new management line-up).
Consumers now have more choice in color mobile phones, as Sprint and Sanyo just announced the introduction of the SCP-3100 series. Available in four trendy colors, Pure Silver, Blue Energy, Always Pink, and the “hottest color to go mobile,” Espresso! According to Danny Bowman, vice president of product marketing for Sprint “Each family member can own the phone in a different color, making it easy to tell a child’s phone from a parent’s as you’re rushing out the door in the morning. Sanyo is the first in the U.S. to introduce the color Espresso in a handset.” [Funny, it looks sorta brown to us — Eds]
Japan’s No. 2 telecoms operator KDDI has said operating profit stagnated in the year to March as a strong performance by the mobile arm offset weak fixed-line operations. Net profit fell five percent to 190.6 billion yen as the company took a charge to write down the impaired value of its old cellular phone facilities. Revenue from its mobile business rose 8.6 percent to 2.51 trillion yen from a year earlier helped by the rising popularity of music downloading service, the expansion of subscribers and a revision in pricing plans.
Sharp Corp. overtook NEC Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. as Japan’s biggest mobile phone maker by shipments for the first time, MM Research Institute said in a report dated yesterday. Shipments by Sharp gained 20 percent to 7.6 million units in the year ended March 31, accounting for 16.3 percent of the total 46.3 million shipments, the researcher said.
DoCoMo has just announced that it will join the, tentatively called, “Asia-Pacific Mobile Alliance,” with six other Asian mobile carriers. The group also includes; Far EasTone – Taiwan, Hutchison Essar – India, Hutchison Telecoms – Hong Kong, KT Freetel – Korea, PT Indosat – Indonesia and StarHub Ltd. from Singapore. The alliance boasts a combined customer base of about 100 million mobile subscribers over eight countries and regions.
Hundreds of IC chips hidden in a mobile phone contain a minuscule amount of gold in their plastic package, in the shape of internal bonding wires. This gold can be extracted quite easily (well, compared to the traditional gold mines where thousands of emanciated mine slaves toiled), and is much appreciated by the mobile shop folks as a windfall. The only problem is to collect enough discarded mobile phones.
Faith Inc. have announced they will take the lead position in a joint venture with game publishers Taito and Square Enix. The three companies have founded a new company, Brave Inc., capitalized at 80 mn yen, with 1,600 shares issued and 14 full-time employees. The holding structure shows 60 percent was invested by Faith Inc., 30 percent from Taito and the remaining 10 percent coming from Square Enix.
