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JASRAC Wins MyUta Decision

Back in November 2005, Tokyo-based Image City announced the beta launch of MYUTA, a new service allowing subscribers to store their digital music files (for their own personal use) on a central server. A key feature of the service was the capability for subscribers to access and play the stored music tracks on their mobile phones. JASRAC immediately stepped in and contacted Image City, claiming the service required its approval in order to launch. Image City disagreed, saying the service was outside of JASRAC’s domain, and the stage was set for a legal battle.

Mobile Blogs and SNS Survey

Seron over at What Japan Thinks translated a recently-published report from infoPLANT looking at access trends of blogs and SNS from both mobile phones and PC’s. Conducted between the 15th and 22nd of May 2007 3,709 people self-selected themselves to complete a public survey offered through the NTT DoCoMo iMode menuing system. 61.9% of the sample was female.

Wireless Wallet Trials in US

According to PC World, Cellular South in Jackson, Miss., joined USA Technologies in Malvern, Pa., this week to announce a two-city consumer trial of WirelessWallet, a service that will let consumers make m-commerce payments from a cell phone. They will use handsets from Kyocera that will act as a digital credit card enabling customers to tap & go their phone on a NFC terminal to make purchases.

SoftBank Mobile Rockin in May

When the TCA subscriber numbers came out on Thursday the champange corks were popping in Shiodome. For the first time ever the number 3 operator (J-Phone, then Vodafone and now SoftBank) gained the most net customers (162,400) on the month beating KDDI’s 138,500 and nearly double DoCoMo’s 82,700. While their Yahoo! portal also added more clients than EZweb and i-mode the company also managed to boost their 3G accounts up by nearly 500,000 month-on-month to total 8.6 million or 50% of their total subscriber base.

MCN Wins Meffy Award

Mobile Content Networks won a Meffy award in Monte Carlo for its popular FM Radio Music Search application which was launched on DoCoMo’s D903i in 2006. The Meffys Search and Discovery Award was a new category introduced this year to highlight the great work being done by companies to encourage people to discover and enjoy content on their handsets. Congats!