KDDI and Mediba have announced [in Japanese] a new fixed/ mobile portal called “Au one beauty” with useful information targeted at female users. The service, searchable anytime and anywhere will provide; popular cosmetic ranking, spa and esthetics salon suggestions along with famous beauty analyst articles to answer needs of women who “want to become beautiful” all offered free of charge.
SoftBank Mobile announced that the number of applications for thier popular White Plan has exceeded 11 million on February 8, 2008. The achievement comes approximately a month and a half after surpassing the 10 million mark on December 22, 2007. As a discount service for White Plan customers, SBM introduced Double White and White Plan Family Discount 24 which have also been well received by customers.
We’ve had a few contacts about the Yahoo! Kids Filter article (no, unfortunately it’s not a mute button) posted earlier in January. Thankfully the boys over at Infinita have waded in and they managed to pull together more details about this whole murky underworld of regulations, and exceptions, for mobile content in Japan.
Mobile Content Networks (MCN) announced the launch of allwords a new mobile content advertising network that enables mobile content providers to purchase all keywords in popular vertical content categories (music, images, games, shopping, etc) in order to increase user traffic, clickthrus, and conversions. Mobile network operators and portals also benefit from an important new revenue opportunity associated with the sale of category based keyword advertising.
Japan will start licensing cellphone “sommeliers” to help guide consumers through complicated functions as mobile telephones become ever more advanced. The communications ministry said it would support a private-sector plan to launch an exam to license specialists who sell cellphones.
According to various local media Twitter will enter the Japanese market in the spring. One interesting post indicates that they are working with Digital Garage, who has made a small investment, and will help localize the service. Also noted was that Twitter founder, Evan Williams, revealed late last year that 20% of their users are – already – based in Japan!
JiJi Press is reporting that Japan mobile market leader DoCoMo slipped to third place in annual mobile phone subscriber growth, for the first time, in 2007 based on TCA data released Thursday. Industry-wide subscribers grew 5.9 pct year-on-year with DoCoMo still holding a commanding lead in market share of 52.9 pct, followed by KDDI with 29.4 pct and Softbank with 17.5 pct.
DoCoMo announced today that subscribers to their i-channel news service surpassed 15 million on January 3, 2008. The achievement came nine months after surpassing 10 million subscribers and two years and three months after the service’s launch (WWJ video). The monthly cost of the service is 150 yen and there is no extra charge for headlines sent to the subscriber phone’s standby screen, but packet charges apply when detailed content is viewed.
Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ) and NTT DoCoMo today announced a preliminary agreement under which IIJ will become the first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to use DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA network to offer corporate data communications services supported by DoCoMo’s HSDPA technology. Details of actual operations are currently under discussion.
The Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) is reporting that Softbank Mobile won the monthly net-subscriber addition war again for the month of November, marking the the seven consecutive victory for the former Vodafone operator! The company gained a total growth of 191,600 subscribers, or nearly double the combined results of KDDI, which added a net 65,400 subscribers, and DoCoMo with 48,200 net additions. DoCoMo is still, by far, the market leader with 53 million customers, followed by KDDI with almost 30 million and Softbank Mobile now at 17.4 million.
