Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

SoftBank Mobile Rockin in May

When the TCA subscriber numbers came out on Thursday the champange corks were popping in Shiodome. For the first time ever the number 3 operator (J-Phone, then Vodafone and now SoftBank) gained the most net customers (162,400) on the month beating KDDI’s 138,500 and nearly double DoCoMo’s 82,700. While their Yahoo! portal also added more clients than EZweb and i-mode the company also managed to boost their 3G accounts up by nearly 500,000 month-on-month to total 8.6 million or 50% of their total subscriber base.

DoCoMo to Enhance Mobile Maps

NTT DoCoMo just announced that they have agreed to form business and capital alliances with ZENRIN DataCom in order to provide advanced map and navigation services for mobile phones. The capital alliance will see DoCoMo take a 10.27% stake in ZENRIN by acquiring 1,700 newly allocated shares in a deal expected to be completed by June 8. Financial details were not disclosed.

DoCoMo to Expand Flat-Rate Services

DoCoMo has plans to introduce flat-rate billing options for all types of mobile data services by the end of 2008 according to this article from the Asahi Shimbun. DoCoMo has already introduced a flat-rate system for i-mode and subscribers for their flat-rate portal access service has exceeded 10 million. However, details of the planned total flat-rate billing options have yet to be decided.

Japanese Cellphone Sales up 16% YoY

Global sales of mobile phones in the first quarter of 2007 reached 257.4 million units, a 14 percent increase from the same period last year, according to Gartner. The growth was bolstered by strong demand from key countries in Asia/Pacific, such as China, as well as Japan. Western Europe and North America registered the expected slow down after strong Christmas sales and saw only moderate growth over the same period in 2006.

Face Check Your Celebrity Status

Our research partners over at Infinita dug-up a great little nugget here today, a cool new service called Koacheki or Face Check. Launched by J-Magic just one month ago the site has already registered an incredible 15 million requests! Based on face-recognition software announced by Oki Electric late last year, the company scans photos submitted from users cellphones and responds with a link to review their top three celebrity matches. A simple yet brilliant way to gather a massive marketing mail list for advertisers and other more advanced services that J-Magic offers.