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

FeliCa and MiFare Founders Unveil Moversa

NXP, founded by Philips, and Sony Corporation have announced the formation of Moversa, a joint venture to drive global adoption of contactless smart card applications in mobile phones using Near Field Communication (NFC). Moversa will plan, develop, produce and market a secure chip, a Universal Secure Access Module (U-SAM), that incorporates both MIFARE and FeliCa operating systems and applications. The U-SAM will also support other contactless operating systems and applications based on customer requirements. Moversa will be led by co-presidents Guus Frericks of NXP and Toshio Yoshihara of Sony.

Disney Mobile to Launch MVNO in Japan

The announcement finally hit the web this week, possibly one of the worst kept secrets in recent times, that SoftBank and Disney have come to terms on rolling out the long-awaited Mickey Mouse MVNO in Japan. An obvious evolution, often speculated during the Vodafone years, for WDIG who launched on i-mode in 2000 and claim over 3M subscribers to their various official content offerings. While Google has dozens of posts about the ‘news’.. Wireless Watch Japan may have a nice little extra scoop!

CyberAgent Results Rise on CA Mobile

CyberAgent has reported consolidated results for the full year ended September 30, 2007, with net sales rising 26.4% on the previous year to 76,007 million yen, operating income rose 26.7% to 5,501 million yen, and ordinary income also rose 38.2% to 5,143 million yen on the year. These gains were driven by solid growth in site listing (search results) advertising and main portal site advertising sales in the advertising agency business, as well as sharp advances in the mobile business and commission and fee collection businesses such as the finance-related business and online game services.

SoftBank Mobile Winning New Subscriber War

The TCA just announced results for October confirming that SoftBank Mobile has won the most net subscribers for sixth consecutive months. Since the introduction of their so-called White Plan, which includes flat-rate voice calling within their network, the company has continued to grow it’s third place market share. According to the official numbers for October 2006, when SoftBank Mobile re-launched the troubled Vodafone KK operations, they have gained almost 2M new customers.

Sharp Ships 5-Million 1Seg TV Phones

Sharp announced on Friday that it has passed the five-million mark for shipments of 1Seg digital tv phones in Japan. Since releasing its first hanset in May 2006 – originally introduced by Vodafone KK – Sharp has deployed a total of eight models across all three operators. By reaching this milestone in less than 18 months, Sharp becomes the first OEM in the industry to ship five million 1Seg handsets.