Mediastick Inc started a new service called “Let’s do MEDIASTICK” for mobile phone users on November 1. The service requires specific hardware and software to read the barcodes, but cell phones that are equipped with decoder software, called “QR Code Decoder,” such as NTT DoCoMo’s F505i, SH505i and D505iS series, also support Mediastick’s system. All types of the 505iS series to be released from November can read the barcodes for the service.
Market leading NTT DoCoMo’s consolidated financial results for the six months ending Sept. 30th were announced last week at this press conference in Tokyo. Operating revenues were up 6.4% while operating income was down 7.8% with earnings per share 3.9% lower when compared to the same period last year. Dr. Kenji Tachikawa, President and CEO stated “During the first six months of fiscal year ending March 31, 2004, the Japanese cellular phone market posted robust growth with the number of net additional subscribers reaching 2.94 million. The enviroment surrounding our business, however, became harsher as the competition among mobile telecom companies intensified..” He also had some interesting comments about their strategy going forward to year end. Full Program Run-time 14:57
JCB Co., Ltd. has announced a biometric authentication trial project in a mobile environment. The trial starts November in Japan with JCB testing the usefulness of fingerprint authentication for mobile access to JCB’s on-line cardmember account inquiry service ‘MyJCB’, using NTT DoCoMo’s F505i mobile phone equipped with a fingerprint scanner. In this trial, the participants download the JCB Safety Login i-appli application, developed in cooperation with Fujitsu Ltd., to the F505i mobile phone to verify fingerprints information.
Japanese telecoms operators are likely to post strong half-year earnings, powered by the steady growth of 3G services and brisk demand for photo and video messaging and ring tone downloading. The new services have helped wireless carriers, including NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. reel in fresh subscribers and maintain healthy per-user revenues, the industry’s main measure of profitability.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s equivalent of The Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal, reported on Sunday September 7 that Japan will introduce number portability to keitai from 2005. If you’re not familiar with this system, it allows you tokeep your cell phone number when you switch between carriers and thus removes one of the significant barriers to jumping ship and signing up with a rival provider. Now call me a cynic if you like, but doesn’t it seem a little too convenient that this system is being introduced just as it is becoming difficult to sign up new subscribers?
Talking to an analyst friend today, we came across the question, how many packets are there in a typical 10-minute video clip encoded for a 3G phone? We asked ourselves this question because, just now, the local press in Japan has caught up with DoCoMo’s plans to roll out HSDPA in late 2004, about a month after WWJ reported on it..!!
