East Japan Railway Company (JR East) and NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (DoCoMo) announced today that they have signed a basic agreement to discuss joint development and management of common infrastructure for JR East’s Suica e-money and DoCoMo’s upcoming “Osaifu-Keitai” credit card service, both based on FeliCa smart card technology. [Ed’s note: They announced the tie-up at this presser back in March]
The KDDI Designing Studio is under siege by storm troopers for the month of July in a concentrated effort to promote the company’s au Auction Star Wars campaign. They have some pretty cool collectables up for grabs to the highest bidder with all proceeds raised going to charity. WWJ was on hand for the launch and while it was disappointing that Darth Vader would not comment on camera, we did manage to shoot a bit of video at the event just for all the dark-side otaku out there.
KDDI has gone all out to boost the content and related services for this project, which includes everything from custom ring tones and EZ books to Flash games, movie trailers and screen savers. It will be interesting to see what the winning bids are on approximately 20 separate lots donated by Lucas Films, you’ll have until 17 August to get a limited edition — one of only 500 made — 24kt, solid-gold C3PO. We’d rather have a chance to win the ubercool Anakin Skywalker Light Saber that looks like it really works!
The recently released Yankee Group report, “Under the Yankee Group Microscope: NTT DoCoMo’s Experience with Flash Lite,” emphasizes how Flash has become a de facto standard in Japan. According to the report, “Sophisticated information services using Flash Lite have characterized the first wave of innovation. More than 60% of the 4,400 official i-mode sites are based on Flash Lite.” WWJ subscribers log in for access to the full report in PDF.
Fresh off the news wire [Jpn], KDDI just announced they are ready to roll out wallet-enabled handsets for their new “EZ-Felica” campaign scheduled to hit the Ginza sometime this September. According to the company, they are street-testing the new BREW-based application program which will offer digital cash together with a range of membership services including loyalty points for registered users. But wait.. that’s not all! KDDI also announced that from January 2006, the company will enable customers to use “Mobility Suica” in partnership with East Japan Railway Company (JR) as well. It seems like only yesterday (actually, December 2003) we reported “KDDI Joins FeliCa Bandwagon”.
bitWallet Ltd., the company that manages digital cash service Edy (Euro-Dollar-Yen), just announced the company will launch a new service called “Edy to Edy” on 20 July. According to the company (rough translation), “[If] the Edy cash value can be sent not only by the Edy number, [but also by] the mail address or the telephone number, it is thought that payments for net auctions, personal gifts or adjustments and congratulations can be used more conveniently.” A minimum transfer fee of 50 yen will be charged for each transaction plus (Aha!) the standard 5% consumption tax; the maximum amount per transfer is limited to 50,000 yen (about US$500). P2P cash transactions between individual handsets has, until now, not been possible in Japan.
Visto Corporation today announced a significant expansion of its Asia Pacific operations to support new market growth in Asia with the opening of a world-class development center and sales offices in China and Japan, and the appointment of Antoine Blondeau as senior vice president and general manager of the Asia-Pacific region. An accomplished executive in the software and wireless telecommunications industries, Blondeau will be based in Visto’s new Tokyo office.
