The (enforced) Road Traffic Law comes into effect Nov. 1 banning mobile phone usage while driving. With stiff fines, and even prison terms, announced people will be shopping for alternatives like this new Handzu-Free Bluetooth product. Tested to run on over 40 different DoCoMo Mova handsets these handy little devices will likely see critical mass adoption in Japan during the next year, then again it’s always a good idea to read the fine print..
While thousands of workers were laid off at the “big” mobile phone companies, a small swiss company dares to start their own mobile phone: Mobi-Click – the mobile phone with “only” three buttons to dial, but with many other surprises, which can’t be found in any other phone: Mobi-Click “Compact” is not only the easiest to use mobile phone, but it also has a emergency call, babyphone and alarm-system integrated. Japan would seem like a natural target for this type of handset..!!!
The sale of DoCoMo’s F900iC, the only FeliCa-enabled FOMA (3G) terminal, started in Japan the first week of August. Herewith, we present a rough translation of a useful chart showing price breakdowns for all F900i-series handsets now available. We’re (more than a little bit) surprised at how much the upgrade charge (to get the latest model) varies by region. At one electronic retail chain, the new contract price on an F900iC in Tokyo is 33,375 yen; in Osaka, 15,700 yen.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries announced that they will add English language capability to the i-mode® Disaster Message Board service beginning September 1, 2004. DoCoMo set up this electronic bulletin board service in Japanese last January, to be activated in the event of a major calamity such as a high-magnitude earthquake. The bulletin board will enable i-mode subscribers within the disaster area to post messages in order to notify family and friends of their personal safety and whereabouts. The service was launched in order to ensure communication and prevent a degradation in network performance, since an overflow of voice calls and data packet transmissions would likely follow a major disaster.
The Mobidec 2004 annual event is back for their 4th year, slated to run Aug. 26 – 27th in Tokyo’s Aoyama Diamond Hall. Discover the future for fusion of cybermoney, music distribution, rich contents, and broadcast. As the cellular phone and mobile web usage are increasingly expanding, this two day seminar will explore the affects of the wireless domain on the real economy. The key players in Japan’s cellular phone business and technology sectors will make presentations, and display company exhibits, of their unique experiance in this field.
KDDI has announced the impending merger of four subsidiaries to form KDDI Network & Solutions Inc., to strengthen management efficiency and improve response times for corporate customers requiring broad and comprehensive solutions. The new company is expected to become a pillar of the corporate fixed communications business for the KDDI group. K-Solutions Inc., KCOM Corporation, OSI Plus Corporation, and KDDI Msat, Inc. will be merged into the new company on October 1, 2004, to strengthen the KDDI Group base and enable greater corporate-wide deployment in the communications service market where the Group expects an intensification of competition in the future.
Japan’s farm ministry will begin a project in fiscal 2005 to create a tracing system enabling consumers to know the “history” of farm products by means of mobile phones, ministry officials said Wednesday. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plans to complete the system, which will cover half of agricultural products, in three years, they said.
Japan’s suffering subway and train commuters may welcome this news although it might be a bit heart-stopping for communications (as opposed to people) carriers. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the transportation bureau of Nagoya city government has decided to relocate relay base stations that were installed near the ticket gates at the 72 below-ground stations in the 80-station system so that commuters cannot use their mobile phones on trains and in stations.
Mobile phone giant Vodafone has reported the first ever drop in customers at its Japanese business, Vodafone KK. Net subscribers fell by 3,100 in July, the first such loss reported by one of Japan’s three main operators.
NTT DoCoMo released their first quarter earnings for fiscal year ending March 31, 2005 yesterday. Net income fell to 170.4 billion yen, or $1.53 billion yen, in the three months that ended June 30, from 196.8 billion yen a year earlier. Sales fell 2.5 percent, to 1.22 trillion yen. Despite adding 1.5 million new 3G subscribers they announced a 13% drop in profits over the same period last year. “Our subscriber growth is solid,” Masayuki Hirata, DoCoMo’s senior executive vice president, said at a news conference, “but many of our current initiatives are essentially price cuts, and the migration of customers to FOMA means related costs are increasing.” According to the figures, overall revenue per subscriber dropped from 8,060 yen to 7,400 yen.
