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

KDDI #1 Again for Subs; Where's W-CDMA?

With the latest Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) figures in for January, the success of DoCoMo’s new 900i series looks like the best hope for the company to overturn four months of KDDI dominance in picking up subscribers. TCA figures for Jan. 31 2004 indicate that KDDI again proved overwhelmingly popular, with the company picking up 500,100 CDMA 2001x subscribers (against a loss of 268,100 CDMAOne subs) against FOMA’s 132,600 increase and Vodafone’s 11,100 W-CDMA subs.

New DoCoMo 3G Handset Hits the Street: Fujitsu F900i

New DoCoMo 3G Handset Hits the Street: Fujitsu F900iLast December, DoCoMo unveiled its new 900i series phones in a splashy press conference at Tokyo’s Imperial hotel, and today, Friday Feb. 6, the first of that series, the Fujitsu F900i, hit the shops. The 900is, which Takeshi Natsuno calls “The best 3G phones in the world,” are ace when compared with the original FOMA phones. The 900is have 3X standby time (480 hours) and weigh 20% less than FOMA’s first models. In other words, the 900is are as good as DoCoMo’s 2G PDC terminals! The new Symbian OS based Fujitsu distinguishes itself with a finger print sensor and, like the other 900i models, a huge (100k) flash bucket. As you sit back and enjoy this video preview to our upcoming program of that launch event, note that DoCoMo is not saying when the other fab 4 are coming out.. yet. Full Program Run-time 2:55

DoCoMo Posts 137.8 billion yen 3Q Net Income

DoCoMo had a decent 3Q, posting net income of 137.8 billion yen ($1.31 billion) for the three months to Dec. 31, while net income for the nine months this fiscal year hit 494.2 billion yen and sales 3.83 trillion yen, the company said today. But the most remarkable trend, as we’ve been pointing out recently, is for the world’s second biggest cellular operator to lose the ever-toughening subscriber race for Japan’s bread-and-butter, but essential PDC subscriber base. Is this really part of the DoCoMo strategy, or are people getting fed up (gasp! shock!) with Ai Kato? But, with an eye to FOMA’s future, the company also raised its somewhat cautious subscriber projection for the 3G service 20% to 2.4 million by March 31 this year.

iSuppli touts $3.5b Mobile Gaming Biz in '07

Read all about it Here guys and geeks- that’s a x100 market expansion thanks to the wonderful world (gaming environment) of wireless phones. iSuppli analyst Jay Strivatsa says that while mobile gaming has not to date been taken seriously, the advent of 3D graphics and 10,000 polygon/sec drawing capabilities of new phones such as Mitsubishi’s D505i and our fave, the Sharp J-SH53– performance that’s already double that of GameBoy Advance — are going to help push the mobile phone gaming market to $3.5 billion in 2007 from $300 million last year. That’s according to the company’s Consumer Electronics Market: A Disruptive Year Ahead in 2004.

NEC's Card Mobile's for China

Surprise! NEC’s new card mobile phone is just going on sale in the China market. Japan’s number one cellie maker certainly appears to be spreading its wings in China these days, even if, or perhaps because things aren’t looking too pretty at the moment in the UK.

FeliCa Networks Sets Up Shop

As mentioned in previous stories and our recent video report, Sony and DoCoMo have been busy setting up FeliCa Networks Inc. to develop the companies’ mobile FeliCa IC that will, we think, lead to the massive expansion of the mobile phone as a do-all contactless payment device. Sony announced today that it has firmed up the FeliCa Networks company organization with Takeshi Natsuno (“Mr. i-mode”) as one of the directors.

Potential and Pitfalls for Playboy on 3G

Potential and Pitfalls for Playboy on 3G“We know what kind of contents sell, we know what the customers want and we can create a great user experience for the users on the networks,” says Playboy.com’s VP of Global Licensing, Markus Grindel, talking to Wireless Watch Japan in Part 2 of our exclusive video coverage from the 3G Mobile Forum 2004. With adult content helping kick-start and then drive the VHS and DVD revolutions, estimates of a $4-7 billion market for this content category in the wireless space in 2006 don’t seem far-fetched at all. But a number of roadblocks, including carrier technologies, billing and DRM pose significant hurdles as well. “Right now its very hard for me to determine if someone receives an image from us if that image is being sent to someone else. How old is that person.. I don’t know, and that’s a key factor to figure out,” says Grindel. Full Program Run-time 12:47