A new high-tech suburban Tokyo train has been launched with the promise of a wireless Internet service allowing passengers to surf the Web on the move. The semi-private Tsukuba Express links Akihabara, Tokyo’s discount electronics heartland, with Tsukuba, a campus town 58 kilometers (36 miles) to the north. For now the Wi-Fi wireless Internet service, offered by NTT BP and Intel, is only on trial in the train carriages and five of 20 stations along the line.
The Japanese and Chinese governments have finalized plans to cooperate in developing technology for fourth-generation cellphones, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Wednesday. The report said Japanese and Chinese government representatives will meet in Tokyo on Friday and are expected to sign an agreement to cooperate in research and development of 4G cellphones, which are expected to come into practical use around 2010.
Japan’s second-largest telecoms operator KDDI Corp. has agreed to buy Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (TEPCO) fixed-line telecoms unit PoweredCom, Inc. in a stock-swap deal, the Asahi daily reported on Wednesday. The Nihon Keizai business daily reported on 29 July that TEPCO, Asia’s biggest utility, would transfer its entire 84 percent stake in unlisted PoweredCom in exchange for KDDI shares in a deal that would value PoweredCom at around 100 billion yen ($900 million).
India will sign three agreements with Japan, aimed at enhancing ties between institutions and industries of the two countries in the IT and telecom sector, in the first meeting of ministerial forum on ICT starting tomorrow. The ICT forum will also witness the signing of three separate MoUs by National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT), Japan with C-DAC, C-DOT and IIT Guwahati, to undertake joint programmes in research and development and HRD in the ICT sector, an official statement said.
O2 has promised its new found love for the i-mode data platform won’t see it kill off its own portal, O2 Active, which is based on WAP. Grahame Riddell, O2’s head of mobile data marketing, said the network has no plans to kill off O2 Active. “We will continue to support O2 Active and enhance its capabilities going forward,” he said. However, i-mode will be sold as the ‘premium’ data service alongside SMS.
Thanks to the folks over at AP Newswire and BusinessWeek, the recent announcement on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.’s plans to move into Japan’s mobile manga market is spreading like wildfire [Google] across the Web today. The Sony Corp. unit confirmed they have signed exclusive contracts with 10 popular manga artists, including Shigeru Mizuki, creator of Gegege no Kitaro. The company also stated plans to increase the number of titles now offered to over 300 by next year. That’s more than double the number offered by NTT Solmare and Toppan Publishing combined.
Wireless Watch Japan has been following the ‘Comic Surfing’ story since September 2004 with a video preview of CelSys’s mobile manga technology at Mobidec and again more recently with another video program from KDDI’s EZ Book launch event held in April this year. Sometimes dubbed the crowning jewel of the mobile entertainment content triple-play (games, music, manga), we have been bullish on this sleeping giant since first sight. Wonder how long it will take before Superman launches in the US?
In the latest move amid industrywide reorganization, Square Enix Co., the maker of the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy video games, announced Monday it will acquire smaller rival Taito Corp. for 67 billion yen. Kyocera Corp., Taito’s parent with a 36 percent stake, said it has already agreed to Square Enix’s bid. Taito, which operates 270 arcades nationwide, is known as the creator of Space Invaders, the arcade video game that became a phenomenon in the early 1980s. Square Enix was born from a merger of the two major role playing game makers two years ago. The combined sales of Taito and Square Enix stood at 158.42 billion yen for the year ended in March.
Rumours are circulating that NTT DoCoMo will introduce a Push-to-Talk (PTT) voice service by mid-October. Several Japanese trade journals have reported the as-yet-unconfirmed plans, saying that DoCoMo plans to market a cellular phone equipped with a chip made by US Qualcomm in October. With three new carriers set to enter the domestic market in 2006, the dominant telco is said to be considering how to defend its market share by offering new services and incentives. Opinions suggest the company will respond to the popular, though as yet still not widely used, flat-rate voice services launched by Willcom in May this year and the family free-call trial running on Vodafone from July through the end of October.
Japan’s Toshiba will invest 200 billion to boost output of flash memory chips used for mobile phones and portable music players to meet soaring global demand, a report says.The Japanese electronics giant will lift production capacity at its domestic chip plant to 150,000 units per month in 2007, up sharply from the current capacity of 10,000 units, the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Sunday.
It’s not the first time that we’ve seen a major brand license a well-known icon to create a designer cell phone. Recently, Ferrari joined the bandwagon with a custom-tailored device by Sharp for Vodafone, available now in Europe and Japan. WWJ thinks many of the usual suspects (cars, sports, fashion, music) are likely to follow suit into the 2005 year-end gift-giving season as well. With music-enabled phones achieving white-hot popularity, perhaps we’ll see boutique handsets dedicated to ABBA, the Beach Boys or even Courtney Love (maybe not since Hilary Duff beat her to it), preloaded with all their ‘greatest hits’ and available just in time for Christmas.
But why stop there? Other global brands (even obscure ones) must be thinking ‘me too’ about now as well; Gucci and Playboy come to mind along with every major league sports team — and don’t forget block-buster movies (a real ‘Bat Phone’ would be very cool). So, what does any of this have to do with Japan you might ask? Plenty.
