AdMob, which recently became cash-flow positive, just landed a new round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. The San Mateo, Calif., company raised $15.7 million in Series C funding. The company plans to use the money to hire staffers in key markets in Western Europe, India, South Africa and Japan, improve the technology that powers its mobile advertising marketplace and grow its sales and business development teams.
According to a Business Beat article in the Nikkei Weekly print edition [.pdf], nearly as many people in Japan access the Internet through cellphones as PCs, so major advertisers and service providers have apparently come together recently in an effort to create a new way to measure the audiences visiting mobile websites. Some 40 companies including Coca-Cola and Panasonic as well as web agencies such as Nifty, DeNA and NetRatings Japan have established a study group to identify a common method to quantify mobile web usage.
Nissan, DoCoMo and Sharp just announced that they have jointly developed a mobile phone capable of functioning as an intelligent key for automobiles. The device will incorporate Nissan’s Intelligent Key system, already a standard feature in various Nissan vehicles. Nissan’s Intelligent Key system, installed in more than 950,000 units of various Nissan models since 2002, employs two-way wireless communications technology to automatically unlock/lock the car door and start/stop the engine. Nissan and Sharp has now integrated these electronic intelligent-key, wireless communications and electromagnetic technologies into the new handset.
The three firms will continue to develop the product with an aim for commercial distribution in early fiscal 2009. They will demonstrate this new device at CEATEC next week and WWJ will be there!
NTT DoCoMo said Wednesday that it will refund up to 32.25 million yen (approx. $300K usd) that it overcharged for its international roaming services in Germany and Cyprus. The top Japanese mobile carrier wrongly charged 100 yen for up to 100 data communication packets in Germany, instead of 50 yen for up to 50 packets, as specified in fee agreements formulated in March 2006. DoCoMo will deduct the excess charges from bills for September, as long as it can confirm the amounts from detailed records of customer communications.
According to the Foreign Policy blog – we told you Obon is a slow news cycle! – online game company NHN Japan has set up a series of these statues around town to promote their mobile game site hange.jp. Apparently, when people touch the statue’s arm with their mobile phone, the application site will automatically open and a lucky winner will be rewarded 10,000 U.S. Dollars.
Kudo’s to TechCrunch for looking beyond the usual US-centric focus to explain the magic mobile ecosystem here in Japan with 1,000 words or less. While, as stated, the web access device of choice is running at even 50-50 between PC and cellphone, it’s most certainly not an either/or scenario…
Since 1998 the CIAJ has conducted an annual study of mobile phone use in Japan and has released this year’s survey results. This report strives to capture the most recent user trends and has added topics which might forcast growth demand in the domestic market, including: handset replacement cycle trends after the implementation of the new purchasing plans, ownership of multiple devices and consumer interest in new services and functions, such as video use. The full report is available Here.
KDDI and Japan Rail have announced their new campaign to help encourage AU customers with the adoption of Suica. The summer handset series includes six models which have the RFID application pre-installed in an effort to enable users to start using their handsets a the preferred payment device at Suica enabled locations. We’d say that’s a full swing opposite from early days when JR required folks to have a View credit-card in order to get Suica onto their phones!
The 14th annual Wireless Japan conference and exhibition is set to kick-off at Tokyo Bigsite for 3 full days next week (wOOt!) focused on current and future mobile industry challenges and opportunities. EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN 2008 will cover the fundamental technology that maintains the wireless broadband network and explore recent trends in standardization, hot applications and solutions for wireless network technology. Of course WWJ will be there as we have been in years past.
The final figures published by CIAJ for the Japanese telecom sector in the last full fiscal year (April 2007 through March 2008) show Wireless network equipment posted sales of 236.8 million yen, a positive growth of 11.3% over the previous year. However, mobile terminal equipment earned 1.662 trillion yen down 4.2% YoY, of which cellular phones accounted for 1.546 trillion yen or negative growth of 5.3% over the previous year. Full details Here.
