The Japanese Internet service company and the U.S. computer company are expected to launch handsets with the iPod functions as early as this year in Japan. Softbank Corp. and Apple Computer Inc. are planning to jointly develop mobile phones that have built-in iPod digital music players and can download songs directly from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, news reports said Saturday. Kyodo News agency had a similar report.
Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is considering a plan to allow mobile telephone subscribers to choose lower communications charges in return for paying more for handsets, ministry officials said Friday. At present, mobile phone carriers such as NTT DoCoMo Inc. sell handsets at steep discounts and cover the costs by adding charges to monthly communications rates, creating an unfair cost disadvantage for subscribers who use the same handsets for a long time. The study group is expected to work out a report on the pricing options in July.
In a rare quadruple play, DoCoMo today issued three new handset announcements plus one new technology tie-up press release. The first handset news includes the long-expected new credit-card-enabled phones that will come bundled with the carrier’s ‘DCMX’ Java-and-IC-chip-based credit card. The new 902iS series FOMA 3G handsets mark the latest step in DoCoMo’s transformation from Just Another Mobile Phone Company to full-featured financial services provider.
The carrier also said it had agreed with Microsoft to incorporate Windows Media technologies in DoCoMo’s F902iS 3G handset, to be released this summer. The first-time collaboration means that the F902iS will support both Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD). The carrier will also evaluate the incorporation of Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s version of SMPTE VC-1 technologies, in future handsets. The press release states that incorporating Windows Media technologies will enable NTT DoCoMo handsets to play music downloaded to a PC from more than 100 online music services around the world, and also support music content ripped from CDs in the highly efficient Windows Media Audio format (login for details).
Vodafone K.K. announces today that from 25 May 2006 it will expand international roaming service areas in which customers can use their Vodafone K.K. 3G handsets abroad. With this expansion, roaming will be available to Vodafone K.K. customers traveling to Armenia, Gambia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Venezuela and Alaska, enabling them to make voice calls in a total of 151 countries and regions.
IDC has released a research report (spotted on IT Wire) examining the consumer mobile segment that finds that DoCoMo’s i-mode platform has “the qualities needed to combat the accelerating downward spiral of ARPU for cellular services.” The research firm concluded that, as a mobile market matures and its subscriber base reaches saturation, mobile operators begin to feel the creep of stagnation and commoditisation, accelerating the downward spiral of ARPU. A new IDC study, titled “Follow The Yellow Brick Road: The Consumer, The Carrier, and The i-mode Platform” examines the roadmap of NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode platform and how emerging mobile non-voice applications have used it as a vehicle to enter the mobile market. While we wholeheartedly agree with the findings, the results in practice have been highly variable at best. Only Bouyges Telecom in France has had any real success with i-mode while several markets — including Italy, Germany and Israel — have seen abject failures. The devil is in the details and if you don’t execute well and account for structural differences in the market, i-mode may not be the goose that lays a golden egg… it might just be a goose.
NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s largest mobile phone operator, plans to launch a music download service as early as June to compete with rival KDDI Corp.’s popular version, the Nihon Keizai business daily reported on Thursday. The paper said DoCoMo will offer thousands of songs for about 300 yen each, similar to the price offered by KDDI’s “au” mobile unit.
