Japanese telecoms operators are likely to post strong half-year earnings, powered by the steady growth of 3G services and brisk demand for photo and video messaging and ring tone downloading. The new services have helped wireless carriers, including NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. reel in fresh subscribers and maintain healthy per-user revenues, the industry’s main measure of profitability.
They’ve gone and done it now! KDDI’s just announced a double whammy; on November 28, the company will offer 3G’s first flat-rate packet services with all you can surf for 4,200 yen (about $37) on the souped-up, 2.4-Mbps (max) EV-DO version of CDMA 1X that KDDI has branded “WIN” (We Innovate the Next) – presumably to beat up on DoCoMo’s W-CDMA-based FOMA. Then, today, it said it was halving the cost of calls from KDDI Au mobile subscribers to KDDI ADSL/ IP home phones on the Dion Service. The knives are out! With three new service innovations, two new terminals, and a data card, the company appears to be following what Kenshi Tazaki, vice president and team manager of Gartner Research Japan, calls a “high risk strategy” (think of all those potential lost packet charges!). Will Big D respond in kind just as it was hoping to glean megabucks from FOMA users? “It’s a very aggressive shot at DoCoMo and stakes out a clear position by KDDI in the mobile market,” says Tazaki.
With former J-Phone’s 3G rollout stalled and, it seems, little left in the goodies barrel to counter DoCoMo’s sleek summer-six 2G 505i rollout, and swelling 3G subscriber figures from both its rivals here in Japan, J-Phone needed to distract press attention from the company’s terrible summer. Last week, Darryl E. Green just did that. There was a strong sense of DeJaVu at WWJ when Green, eschewing fowl or game, pulled the NEC ‘tellycelly’ out of his corporate top hat at October 1’s inaugural Vodafone KK press conference. Remember Sha-mail? How fleet-footed J-Phone sidestepped DoCoMo and stole the hearts, or at least the images, of 10 million teenagers with cool keitai camera phones? It looks like the rebranded J-Phone-cum-Vodafone KK combo is going to leapfrog DoCoMo and KDDI again with Japan’s first TV-Phone this December. And, beyond that, Vodafone KK has a lot more up its wide sleeves with six new 3G phones, new business billing plans and bargain rates to fight back.
Flashback a few years when J-Phone stunned the competition, and started a global wireless trend, by rolling out their new camera phones; well they may have just done it again. J-Phone was officially renamed as Vodafone KK on Oct. 1st. We were on hand to see President and CEO Darryl E. Green announce the company’s strategy going forward. After his brief pep talk, and during the rather harsh question period from reporters on J-Phone’s recent performance, Green pulled out a shiny red metallic NEC handset. The cameras strobed and the room began to buzz as it became clear that Vodafone had scooped everyone yet again with Japan’s first TV-Phone, set to hit Tokyo streets just in time for New Years. Full Program Run-time 14:24
Mobile phone operator J-Phone Co., a unit of Britain’s Vodafone Group PLC, on Wednesday changed its corporate name to Vodafone K.K. At a press conference in Tokyo, Darryl Green, Vodafone’s representative executive officer, president and chief executive officer, said, “This will be a good opportunity for Vodafone and its partner companies to widen the market to a global scale for their services.”
J-PHONE Co., Ltd., to be renamed Vodafone K.K. tomorrow, announced today that on October 1 it will launch Vodafone Global Rental, a mobile handset rental service for visitors to Japan. With this offering, visitors who come to Japan either on business or pleasure can now enjoy the same communication services that they do at home. Vodafone Global Rental is not just a mobile handset rental service for visitors toJapan-customers of overseas mobile operators who have roaming agreements with J-PHONE(currently 110 operators in 79 countries and areas) can enjoy voice, SMS and packetroaming in Japan by simply inserting their GSM SIM card into a 3G rental handset, a firstin the Japanese market.
