DoCoMo’s Mobility Newsletter for August is out and has some interesting numbers from their in-house FeliCa survey conducted this spring. In April, DoCoMo entered a strategic business and capital alliance for credit card business with the Sumitomo Mitsui Group, confirming the introduction of mobile wallet services as a key step for the evolution of m-commerce and DoCoMo’s mobile Internet strategy)
NTT DoCoMo has teamed up with Urahara.org and TechFirm to launch a new Felica-enabled service called TownPocket in Harajuku. Customers with RFID chip handsets will have access to easy registration for coupon campaigns, contests and prizes at 153 participating stores in the youth-trendy downtown shopping district. The campaign is set to launch on 8 August and organizers are targeting a total of 300 participating locations in the area by the end of September. [Japanese Press Release]
NaviTime Japan have announced that their overseas map retrieval service will be available as of 1 August in the UK, France, Germany and the US. Running on the i-Mode and v-Live menus, Japanese tourists will be able to determine the best guided directions from a car, a subway or on a walking route. The firm said the service, offering event information such as sports, theater and festivals along with hotel info in the target travel destination, allows users to confirm sightseeing, restaurant and store locations from their local maps.
DoCoMo announced today that they will launch “i-channel,” a news and information service, and compatible handsets, the 3G FOMA 701i-series. The service will be launched concurrently with three FOMA 701i models, which are to be released shortly. The three new 701i handsets (from Mitsubishi, NEC and Panasonic [.PDF]) will be compatible with the i-channel service and all standard FOMA services and functions, including videophone, Chaku Uta ring songs, Chaku Motion ring videos, Deco Mail (HTML mail), i-appli (Java) and Macromedia Flash applications. DoCoMo also introduced two hybrid units today; the ‘fashionable’ FOMA DOLCE and the GPS-enabled SA700iS from Sanyo.
Subscribers to i-channel will automatically receive various content, such as news, weather, entertainment reports, sports news and horoscopes, delivered to the phone’s standby screen as telop text. By pushing the i-channel button, a Flash-based UI channel list will appear and the user can select the channel they want to view.
Internet Initiative Japan Inc., IIJ Technology Inc., and Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd., have formed a business alliance for the commercialization of an RFID platform using networks based on international RFID standards called the EPCglobal Network. Through this alliance, the three companies will offer global real-time SCM (supply chain management), which can be put to practical use for intercompany and international logistics.
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