NTT DoCoMo today announced their Q3 results (1 October – 31 December) for fiscal 2006 with year-ending March 31st 2007. Reported sales rose 0.4% with operating profit up 18% during the period, however net income fell to 93.9 bln JPY compared with 131.1 bln JPY in Q3 of fiscal 2005. The 28% year-on-year decline was caused by the one-time profit (40 bln JPY) booked from the operators sale of its stake in KPN Mobile in Q3 last year.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that the company and UFIDA Software Co., Ltd., the leading Chinese supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will enter the corporate mobile solutions market in China through a joint investment in Fidatone Mobile Technology and Service Co., Ltd. DoCoMo will invest US$5 million (roughly 600 million yen) to acquire an approximately 33.3% equity stake in March 2007.
SoftBank Mobile rounded out the Japanese operators spring handset announcement rush this week by announcing a new fleet of models – Flash site Here – with major bling factor. According to the companies announcement most models will be available by March which is traditionally the busiest handset replacement month of the year in Japan as the new academic and fiscal year begins on April 1st. Masayoshi Son did his best Steve Jobs impersonation, black turtle-neck and all, however there was no announcement related to the recent news from MacWorld.
Models of interest include the 911T by Toshiba, a candybar slider with a huge 3-inch screen running on high speed HSDPA has a 3.2-megapixel camera, 1GB of internal memory, 1Seg digital tv, it’s FeliCa m-commerce enabled and comes complete with a pair of Oakley Thumps which connect via bluetooth. Other new handset highlights include; the 812SH Pantone series by Sharp (pictured right) with 20 different colors to choose from, the 812T Kodomobile model designed especially for children and Nokia’s E-61 Communicator – labeled as X01NK – which has Japanese Kanji text input and comes Wi-Fi enabled.
There are three new phones from Samsung including the 708SC slider which claims the title for the worlds thinnest 3G handset at a mere 8.4mm thick and the 707SC Swarovski Crystal version which is a follow-up to the earlier 705SH model [.jpg image] which sold-out the day it was launched last fall.
There have been over 30 new handset models announced by the three main operators during the last week for content and application developers, industry wags and ultimately the marketplace at large to chew over.. whew! WWJ subscribers login for more comments, photos and a video-link to watch the actual presentation (70 minute runtime) from the press conference held in Shinagawa on Thursday.
To support their goal of creating the world’s first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices, Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone announced today the official launch of the LiMo Foundation. A not-for-profit organization, the LiMo Foundation is aimed at blending the community-based development benefits of transparency, innovation and scalability with the best development practices from the mobile community to create an innovative new business model.
KDDI announced third quarter profit fell 2.8% as marketing costs surged along with their increase in new subscribers. Net income declined to 55 billion yen ($457 million) for the three months ended Dec. 31, from 56.6 billion yen a year earlier, while sales surged 13 percent to 858 billion yen from 761 billion yen a year ago. Operating profit fell 4.7% year on year in the third quarter to 86.6 billion yen, KDDI said.
KDDI announced their spring 2007 handset line-up this week with ten new 3G models focused on form and function. The latest addition to their Au Design Project, the Media Skin concept by Tokujin Yoshioka, was introduced along with this announcement that it will go on display with earlier offerings – the Infobar, Talby and Neon – at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The other models on deck are coming from Toshiba (W51T and W52T), Casio (W51CA), Sanyo (W51SA), Kyocera (W51K), Hitachi (W51H), Sony Ericsson (W51S), the second-ever model from Sharp (W51SH) – a popular design originally introduced by Vodafone in spring 2006 (and also recently available from DoCoMo) – plus a first-time offer by top-tier maker Panasonic (W51P).
The W52T, a candybar slider with a wide VGA 480×800 resolution 3-inch screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera and 1GB of on-board memory [.jpg image] stood out as quite impressive during our quick test drive. An immediate and interesting observation is that eight of the ten handsets are 1 Seg digital-TV enabled, which should clearly signal (pardon the pun) that KDDI is bullish on broadcast TV content and services. Otherwise, most have the FeliCa mobile wallet function and the usual goodies such as GPS, PC Site Viewer, Hello Messenger and – of course – all units are running on BREW and come with the EZ suite of mobile content (books, games, auctions etc.) and are LISMO music ready.
The carriers and handset makers are pumping full blast with mobile number portability pushing everyone to improve and deliver better product offering. DoCoMo also announced ten new phones this week while SoftBank is expected to introduce their line-up soon as well. March is traditionally the busiest handset replacement month of the year in Japan, as the new academic and fiscal year begins April 1st; we’ll be looking forward to the official TCA subscriber results.
