Japan Market
Japan Market

Japan Market

Japan's Bullet Trains to Get Wi-Fi

Passengers on the famous Japanese Shinkansen “bullet trains” will be able to surf the Internet while traveling at 300 kilometers per hour, thanks to a new service planned by the railway operator. But there’s going to be quite a wait until the first wireless LAN-equipped trains arrive at the platform. Central Japan Railway (JR Tokai), which operates the Shinkansen service between Tokyo and the western Japanese city of Osaka, said it plans to offer wireless Internet service throughout all cars of its new N700-series trains in early 2009.

Softbank Exec Confident of Outdoing Rivals

Softbank president Masayoshi Son expressed confidence that the Softbank group will outdo NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in Japan’s mobile phone service market. The Softbank group, including Yahoo Japan, has been stronger than rivals such as NTT DoCoMo in Internet services, Son told its first general meeting of shareholders since the Internet investor acquired the Japan unit of British mobile phone company Vodafone in April.

Ministry Ponders Mobile Network Access

The Ministry of Communications is studying making it mandatory for telecommunications service providers to allow other telecom firms access to their wireless communications networks in the year to March 2008, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported without citing sources. With the move, the ministry aims to bring more competition to a market that is dominated by NTT DoCoMo Inc, KDDI Corp and the Softbank Corp group, the business daily said.

Hitachi to Boost RFID Business

Hitachi Ltd., Japan’s largest electronics conglomerate, said on Wednesday it plans to launch full-scale wireless tag operations, targeting a 16 percent share of the $3.5 billion domestic market in the next four years. Hitachi, which first developed an IC tag in 2001, has forecast 9.7 trillion yen in consolidated sales in the year to March 2007.

Online Advertising in Japan

As in many countries with an experienced online population, and borne out by recent data from Video Research Ltd., internet usage in Japan is higher than usage of all other types of media besides television. Mobile ad revenue is also keeping pace with online advertising in general, although it has dipped down somewhat from the boom year of 2004.