In early 1999, Japan’s top mobile-phone company, NTT DoCoMo, received cheers from customers and analysts alike for introducing its i-mode mobile Internet service. The service, which claims 37 million subscribers and lets them check stock quotes, sports, news and other information over their cell phones, was hailed as the greatest invention in Japan since the Walkman.
KDDI Corp. reported group net profit of 30.87 billion yen for the fiscal third quarter, while boosting its full-year-earnings forecast by five billion yen, citing healthy consumer demand for its flagship “au” mobile-phone service, lower marketing costs, and restructuring. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, KDDI posted sales of 695.08 billion yen and operating profit of 56.80 billion yen.
I’ll be the first to cheer when even one of Japan’s mobile Internet troika offer substantial per-event traffic billing regardless of number of packets. Realistically, this probably won’t happen on the 2G networks (the spike in usage would swamp the systems, yada, yada, yada), so the interesting question is: which 3G network will offer re-event billing the first? And which will subsequently offer flat-rate? Don’t be surprised if it’s KDDI with their CDMA technology.
Update: How about that!
Cees van den Heijkant, CEO of KPN Mobile The Netherlands, knows wireless Internet almost better than DoCoMo does. His company studied the model, stripped it down to basics, and last April birthed a bouncing baby i-mode that now claims over 200,000 subscribers (starting with only a single, less-than-spectacular handset, no less). Not bad for a process that took a year-and-a-half, required entirely new thinking on how to manage data services, and involved a lot of effort to, as he puts it, “understand how you’re going to bring the content to the customers.” Don’t miss this program!
On December 3, J-Phone Co., Ltd. held a press conference in Tokyo to announce the launch of a new third-generation (3G) wireless network under the “Vodafone Global Standard” service name. “SMS is a form of data roaming and we also have packet roaming” said J-Phone president Darryl E. Green at last week’s 3G launch, adding, “It’s not as rich as it could be, but we’re working on many things.” Watch this exclusive report from the Tokyo event, including one-on-one interviews with Green and CTO John Thompson and highlights of 3G technology demos.
Overall, I’m underwhelmed. Handset quality and clunkiness versus feature mix are widely considered to be major factors in the fizzling of FOMA to date. I think J-Phone will have to market like heck to convince people these are any better than current (great-quality) 2G models, and if DoCoMo launches better 3G models (as they are expected to do very soon), J-Phone could be in trouble.
