Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

Japan Mobile Music 3Q Results

The Record Industry Association of Japan just announced their Q3 numbers, reporting period 1 July – 30 September 2006, with mobile music sales showing strong year-on-year growth. Considering the wider range of enabled handsets, and agressive marketing by all three carriers in this space, it should come as no surprise to industry watchers that full-track downloads posted a sales value increase of 201% when compared to the same period last year. Full details after the jump.

Japan's 1st Mobile Phone Novel Awards

An Osaka woman who wrote of a pure love story between a schoolgirl prostitute and a host club gigolo was Tuesday awarded the grand prize in the first Japan Mobile Phone Novel Awards at a ceremony in the Mainichi’s Tokyo headquarters. Towa, the pen name of the author, received 1 million yen and the right to publish “Kurianesu,” her story about unlikely love.

NEC Posts Increased First-Half Loss

NEC Corp., losing share to Sharp Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in Japan’s mobile-phone market, said its first- half loss widened fivefold because of a slump in sales. Shares of NEC have slid 35 percent since this year’s peak in April as Toshiba overtook the company in handset sales in the fiscal first-half. NEC today cut its mobile phone shipment target by 33 percent and said the business will post a 48 billion yen operating loss this fiscal year, instead of a previously forecast for a 15 billion yen loss.

Sanyo Shares Drop on Loss Forcast

Shares of Sanyo Electric Co., forecasting its first profit in three years, are headed for their biggest drop since January after a report said the company may post a loss this business year. A report in the Asahi newspaper yesterday said Sanyo will cut 1,000 jobs after sales of mobile phones declined and domestic production dropped.

KDDI's Aggressive EV-DO Upgrade

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has reported that KDDI is strengthening its technological and differentiated services lead in Japan by upgrading its CDMA network to so-called Revision A. Rev A’s most compelling benefit will be a dramatic increase in uplink speeds up to 1.8 Mbps and downlink speeds up to 3.1 Mbps, as compared to EV-DO Release 0 that supports speeds up to 153.6 kbps and 2.4Mbps, respectively. KDDI has already announced the availability of two handsets from Toshiba, the W47T and DRAPE, to support the commercial launch of its advanced broadband technology services by December 2006.

KDDI Wins October Subscriber War

KDDI Corp. appears to have benefited the most from the mobile phone number portability service introduced Oct. 24 to allow people to switch phone companies without changing their numbers. KDDI said Wednesday that it had a net 200,500 new subscribers in October, market leader DoCoMo saw its subscribers increase by only 40,800 while Softbank Mobile said its subscribers increased by 23,800.