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Price War for Corporate Mobile Users

SoftBank Mobile and NTT DoCoMo have both issued press releases this afternoon with new price plans specifically targeted at enterprise users. DoCoMo announced that all corporate customers committing to a two-year contract would receive an immediate 50% discount on basic monthly charges under the new “Office-wari MAX 50” plan. The maximum 50% discount was previously reserved for customers that had subscribed to DoCoMo services for at least 11 consecutive years.

Fujitsu to Spin Off Two Divisions

Fujitsu announced it has decided to spin off its shared technology and design divisions and convert them, as of October 1, 2007, into two newly established corporations, Fujitsu Advanced Technologies Limited and Fujitsu Design Limited. Fujitsu is making its broad operational expertise and experience available to customers through the provision of business process outsourcing (BPO) services. Now, in conjunction with this approach, Fujitsu is separating into independent subsidiaries its shared technology and design divisions.

Capcom to N-Gage in 2008

Nokia and Capcom have announced that Capcom will be publishing games on N-Gage in 2008. Capcom is the first Japanese based publisher to show their commitment to N-Gage, which makes its global debut later this year. Classic titles such as Mega Man, Street Fighter and Resident Evil can distributed over the air through operator networks or over the internet to a user’s PC.

Japan Mobile Phone Sales for Q2 of 2007

Gartner is reporting that worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the second quarter of 2007 reached 270.9 million units, a 17.4 per cent increase from the same period last year. In Japan, sales to end users in the second quarter of 2007 were 12.1 million units, an increase of 10.3 per cent from the second quarter of 2006 but a decline of 17.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007.

Japan Mobile Content Market Nears 1 Tln Yen

According to a recent report, Japan’s mobile content marketplace in 2006 was worth some ¥928.5 billion, (approx. $800 million) posting an increase of 129% year-on-year. Noted by category the mobile content market, transactions for fee-based content, comprised ¥366.1 billion, marking an increase of 116% over 2005. Mobile commerce — including hard goods, services, and transactions — made up ¥562.4 billion, an increase of 138% over final results for fiscal 2005.