Apple will launch its iTunes Music Store in Japan this August, according to AFX News. A brief report states that major Japanese label Avex has agreed to license songs to Apple’s soon-to-launch iTunes Japan Music Store. Avex is the first major Japanese label to agree terms with Apple for servicing songs through the service, the report observes.
Internet firm Livedoor Co. said today it plans to apply for a new mobile licence that the Japanese government is expected to issue later this year, with the aim of starting a data service. Livedoor will apply for the licence on the 2 gigahertz band, a company spokesman said. It will be competing against mobile broadband startup IP Mobile Inc. and Willcom Inc., a wireless service operator owned by Kyocera Corp. and U.S. fund Carlyle Group.
Motorola Inc.’s new phone for business users in Japan is just a start for the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker as it re-enters the demanding Japanese market, an executive said on Thursday. Michael Tatelman, Motorola vice president and general manager of mobile devices in North Asia, said it has the right combination of technology and design capability to meet Japanese users’ needs as they upgrade to a third-generation network based on a global standard.
Credit Saison Co., Japan’s second- largest publicly traded credit card operator, said it will expand ties with regional banks to outgrow bigger rivals Nippon Shinpan Co. and JCB Co. and win 30 percent of the domestic market by 2010. [..] Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., Japan’s No. lender, has allied with NTT DoCoMo Inc. to offer credit services for mobile phone subscribers. It had about 12.8 million cardholders as of March 31 2004.
Tokyo’s Shinagawa-ku has taken an extra step to protect children in the ward by deciding to give them “crime prevention cell phones” that allow them to alert authorities if they are in danger and make emergency calls. Trials of the alert system the phones use will start at the beginning of next week. Plans have been made to supply the devices to all 12,000 elementary school students in the ward within this year.
An unlicensed but brilliant surgeon — himself terribly scarred — prepares to take on another apparently hopeless case, this time right on the cell-phone screen. Black Jack, a series of immensely popular comics from Tetsuwan Atom’s (Astro Boy) creator Osamu Tezuka has decided to make the jump to wireless and is coming to KDDI 3G mobile phones. For 315 yen a month, readers can download Black Jack’s medical adventures twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Stories of this anti-hero have been serialized for 30 years in Japan, continuing long after the death of Tezuka. Black Jack has had his own live TV drama, video animation and animated TV series, and now he’s going mobile.
