Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

Exclusive iida Designer Handsets

The au Design Project has added to their unique collection of custom models with three new units; Happiness with Dots, Doggie Ring-Ring and the groovy Hand Bag for Space Travel, created by Yayoi Kusuma going on sale here July 30th. These handmade limited edition offerings, priced accordingly from $1,000 to $10,000 each, will be available on first come basis both online and at one of several specially designated shop locations. Considering past success of the INFOBAR, talby, neon, and MEDIA SKIN designs, which were were added to the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, no doubt the latest iida branded concept will gain approval with certain discerning clients overseas as well.

Japan Mobile Campaign Award Winners

This press release [J] just came through from KDDI with news they have won a D&AD Yellow Pencil in the environmental design category for their PLY exhibition, see Mobile Marketing segment for more lucky winners. Also announced, the folks at Canne have awarded KDDI a shiny bronze Lion for their funky iida calling – mobile music generator – campaign, details on video Here. Sony Music grabbed some hardware for their very cool Pair Movie series, watch the video Here. More notes after the jump

Japanese Cellphones & Global Markets

Apollo 11 - 40th anniversary image via Google Japan top page today!Lets take an A-B-C approach on this recent post from NYT. Since Gen Kanai has already provided a strong and balanced review, taking an open-source software approach, we will stick to the hardware aspect for our humble comments herein.

As long-time observers of the Japan market, with a decent grasp on the global stage considering that’s where many in our audience are based, we have a few thoughts about possible handset futures. As we see it, there are basically two niche ends of the spectrum: smartphones and emerging markets, so it’s reasonable to expect some near-term activity with DoCoMo and one or more of their handset partners getting underway in India, for example. A single digit share in either of those growth areas, let alone the main-stream replacement cycle, would easily surpass the home market annual volumes shipped as indicated at about 30M units. Now to the A-B-C heart of our argument. Follow along after the jump.

Free Wireless on the Bullet Bus

People on the move between Tokyo and Osaka can now hop a luxury bus service which conveniently includes speedy wireless access. These red-eye express coaches offer riders 802.11b/g connectivity via IIJ and DoCoMo networks with power access and Business Class seats for about $100usd, a notable savings compared to taking the Shinkansen. While commuter buses are usually designed to carry up to 40 passengers, these new Eco-Friendly hybrid gas and electric powered chariots are configured with only 16 large comfortable reclining vibro-seats. Talk about flying first class on the ground!

Japan Mobile Market Growth in 2008

According to the Nikkei, the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecomms announced the mobile contents and services market results in 2008 increased by 17% YoY to reach 1.35 Trillion JPY (approx. $14 Billion usd), mobile advertising not included. The mobile commerce market, including mail orders and stock transactions recorded $9B, up 19% while airline and hotel reservations, in the same segment, increased by 25%. The mobile contents category, lead by music, games and e-books, gained 13% to about $5B. Do the math on a mobile population of 106M contracts!

Mobile Website Flash Creator

NEC BIGLOBE announced it will introduce a mobile site Flash creator platform, under a SaaS model, as of today. According to the release, a multi-design template driven offering is used for the construction of mobile websited so clients need only add the text and images, no special skills are required. The package fee is quoted at $1,500 for initial setup and $5k per month for hosting with stated target of 300 clients in 36 months for a cool 1 Billion jpy. Adobe Flash has been a standard pre-install, by all operators on all handsets, since 2004 in Japan.