The deputy Akita governor is in hot water for playing pachinko instead of returning to his office after a massive earthquake rocked northern Japan on Monday, it was learned Wednesday. Deputy Gov. Takashi Chiba was the highest-ranking man at the Akita Prefectural Government when the quake occurred at around 6:30 p.m. on Monday because Gov. Sukeshiro Terata was away on a trip to South Korea.
We’re hard at work preparing our new site and July line-up which will include an exclusive look at NTT DoCoMo’s 505i-series launch event held in Tokyo to announce the latest of their super-sophisticated i-mode handsets, visits with several mobile technology-focused ventures being fledged at Tokyo’s Venture Habitat, and a profile of a unique mobile health-care management service. Make sure you’re subscribed to the Wireless Watch Japan mailing list to stay up-to-date on our relaunch activities and to receive the first issue of the new and improved WWJ mail magazine.
Go ahead and feel free to mail me with your notes on which US/Canadian companies, technologies, business models, and content services bear watching. Can m-mode delivered via GSM/GPRS by AT&T Wireless sweep the US? Or does the backwards compatibility and high speed of CDMA 1x technology have an overwhelming advantage – making the CDMA carriers the ultimate market winners? Republishing your collected, collective wisdom on the European and North American mobile Net markets in the final two WWJ newsletters strikes me as being the best way I can pay back your loyal readership and spread around some of the local-market knowledge that WWJ subscribers have amassed.
A year ago, NTT DoCoMo looked like yet another Japanese company gone astray. A year ago, NTT DoCoMo looked like yet another Japanese company gone astray. After writing off half of the $16 billion it had invested in overseas phone companies, Japan’s No. 1 wireless operator plunged into the red for the first time since its founding in 1991. Its reputation as a leader in innovation took a beating after it was late to offer cell phones with built-in cameras, the latest rage in Japan. And the launch of its much-hyped 3G high-speed mobile service turned out to be a much-publicized flop.
A man posing as a deliveryman kidnapped the 12-year-old daughter of a company president but later released her, police said Monday. The man visited the home of the junior high school student in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday while her parents were out.
Visa International, Nippon Shinpan, Aeon Credit Service, OMC Card, and NTT DoCoMo announced that they have agreed to commercialize credit card settlements using mobile phones, and that they will start a trial service soon. The mobile phones designated for the trial service are NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode-supporting 504i series and 504iS series that have the infrared communication function to download Java applications.
