AdMob, which recently became cash-flow positive, just landed a new round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. The San Mateo, Calif., company raised $15.7 million in Series C funding. The company plans to use the money to hire staffers in key markets in Western Europe, India, South Africa and Japan, improve the technology that powers its mobile advertising marketplace and grow its sales and business development teams.
According to a Business Beat article in the Nikkei Weekly print edition [.pdf], nearly as many people in Japan access the Internet through cellphones as PCs, so major advertisers and service providers have apparently come together recently in an effort to create a new way to measure the audiences visiting mobile websites. Some 40 companies including Coca-Cola and Panasonic as well as web agencies such as Nifty, DeNA and NetRatings Japan have established a study group to identify a common method to quantify mobile web usage.
Nissan, DoCoMo and Sharp just announced that they have jointly developed a mobile phone capable of functioning as an intelligent key for automobiles. The device will incorporate Nissan’s Intelligent Key system, already a standard feature in various Nissan vehicles. Nissan’s Intelligent Key system, installed in more than 950,000 units of various Nissan models since 2002, employs two-way wireless communications technology to automatically unlock/lock the car door and start/stop the engine. Nissan and Sharp has now integrated these electronic intelligent-key, wireless communications and electromagnetic technologies into the new handset.
The three firms will continue to develop the product with an aim for commercial distribution in early fiscal 2009. They will demonstrate this new device at CEATEC next week and WWJ will be there!
NTT DoCoMo said Wednesday that it will refund up to 32.25 million yen (approx. $300K usd) that it overcharged for its international roaming services in Germany and Cyprus. The top Japanese mobile carrier wrongly charged 100 yen for up to 100 data communication packets in Germany, instead of 50 yen for up to 50 packets, as specified in fee agreements formulated in March 2006. DoCoMo will deduct the excess charges from bills for September, as long as it can confirm the amounts from detailed records of customer communications.
According to the Foreign Policy blog – we told you Obon is a slow news cycle! – online game company NHN Japan has set up a series of these statues around town to promote their mobile game site hange.jp. Apparently, when people touch the statue’s arm with their mobile phone, the application site will automatically open and a lucky winner will be rewarded 10,000 U.S. Dollars.
Kudo’s to TechCrunch for looking beyond the usual US-centric focus to explain the magic mobile ecosystem here in Japan with 1,000 words or less. While, as stated, the web access device of choice is running at even 50-50 between PC and cellphone, it’s most certainly not an either/or scenario…
