KDDI Corp. appears to have benefited the most from the mobile phone number portability service introduced Oct. 24 to allow people to switch phone companies without changing their numbers. KDDI said Wednesday that it had a net 200,500 new subscribers in October, market leader DoCoMo saw its subscribers increase by only 40,800 while Softbank Mobile said its subscribers increased by 23,800.
Japan mobile industry watchers are awaiting the official October stats from the Telecom Carriers Assoc. (TCA) to be posted this week. Considering the figures already announced by both DoCoMo and KDDI at the end of October it would seem that mobile number portability has – as predicted – provided KDDI the most benefit so far. However, after a quick calculation based on the information already available, SoftBank Mobile may well be in the news as a result of what would appear to be rather ‘disappointing’ numbers.
joint venture with Japanese Internet and telecoms group Softbank Corp. The 50-50 venture, to be called MySpace Japan, will first offer services for personal computers and will eventually allow users to post photos and write blogs via mobile phones. The firms are expected to announce the deal as early as this week after a meeting between News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. The Japanese version of MySpace is live here however there is still no official announcement from Softbank. [Update: it’s official — Eds]
Napster has announced the launch of Napster Mobile on iMode. DoCoMo is now promoting Napster Mobile, with over-the-air full length songs and ringtones and the Napster To Go PC-to-handset sideloading capabilities through a multi-million dollar integrated marketing campaign comprised of TV, outdoor, print, in-box, online and on-deck promotion. The campaign also includes today’s platform-wide takeover of iMode by Napster. DoCoMo customers can use Napster Mobile to access full-length songs and ringtones that can be delivered over-the-air (OTA), directly to their mobile handset for immediate listening and downloading.
NTT DoCoMo has just announced that the number of subscribers to their 3G FOMA service surpassed the 30 million mark on November 4, 2006. According to the statement, DoCoMo plans to increase the number of FOMA base stations by 1.5 times year on year by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2007 and aims to expand the coverage area for HSDPA 3.5G, which provides significantly faster speed than the current W-CDMA based data transmission, while developing more new compatible handset models.
Derek Kurton, formally in charge of strategizing and building Disney’s wireless efforts, has posted an interesting article about the way carriers deal with mobile content in the US: It’s too bad the US hasn’t seen the adoption of the democratic Asian model, where carriers put up just about all content available, and let the customers decide which is bad, which is good, and which belongs at the top of the decks. This model has worked wonders in Japan and Korea, and would work even better when joined by new emerging solutions in custom UIs, search, segmentation and discovery.
