According to the Nikkei, via Reuters, Sanyo Electric will unload its handset sales unit in a deal that could be worth up to 10 billion yen ($85 million). Telecom Sanyo operates 60 retail stores in Japan and serves as a sales agent for DoCoMo and other mobile operators. It offers handsets made by Sanyo as well as other mobile phone producers, the newspaper said.
DoCoMo announced that for the purpose of executing unified and effective promotional marketing activities, it will establish a new Corporate Branding Division on August 1, 2007. Corporate Branding Division staff will assume responsibility for marketing, promotion of customer satisfaction, reinforcement of the corporate brand and other promotional activities.
After last week’s O2 and Telstra i-mode cancellation news came out, it took hardly any time at all for the obfuscation and mis-analyses to hit the Web.
The news, in case you missed it, confirmed that Australia’s Telstra would, and the UK’s O2 most likely would, end their i-mode services; Telstra will terminate i-mode support at the end of this year, while O2 will stop selling new handsets this month and phase the service out over the next two years.
O2 UK was reported to have 260,000 active users, a dozen i-mode-compatible handsets and some 150 sites; O2 Ireland has not stated their subscriber numbers, but the Times said total O2 subscribers were 546,000, implying that Ireland had 286,000 i-moders. Telstra reportedly has fewer than 60,000 subscribers. WWJ members login for the full skinny.
According to an article on Media in Canada, via Mobile Kawya, states; “QR technology has been incredibly successful for marketers in Japan and we expect similar success in Canada,” Michael Gramlow, CD interactive at Dentsu Canada, tells MiC. “It’s a great way to connect with a youth target that’s notoriously difficult to reach – not just because it offers something new and different for them to interact with, but also because it generates a lot of street buzz.” The four-week campaign, which ends on July 15, involves the wild posting of 1,100 posters on construction boards and within frames on office buildings.
TV Bank, a division of the SoftBank Group, has announced a new contents service, Yahoo! Animation, in addition to the Yahoo! Streaming channel which was introduced at the end of May. A so-called digest version of official baseball games, offered free of charge via the operators Yahoo! mobile portal, will include games from Japanese major league baseball teams including; the Chiba Lotte Marines, Tohoku Golden Eagles, Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters along with the company-owned Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. The service sounds very much like the product offered by Tokyo-based Craftmax as described in our video interview conducted back in spring 2005.
Docomo and am/pm have begun equipping convenience stores with cellphone recycling bins, so that people can recycle their unwanted handsets. The recycling bins handle all makes and models and are designed to prevent theft. According to this announcement there are currently eight trial locations in place with plans to expand nationwide depending on consumer adoption.
According to this article via the Yomiuri Shimbun, airlines are growing increasingly concerned about children bringing cell phones onto planes, as they could interfere with navigation systems. Airlines are especially concerned about the latest children’s cell phones, which contain a built-in crime prevention function that automatically restarts the phone if it is switched off. [WWJ demo video Here]
The Nikkei Advertising Research Institute, Nikkei Media Laboratory, and D2 Communications surveyed usage trends by companies using mobile advertising to reach Japan’s more than 97 million mobile phone subscribers. Between February and March of 2007, survey data for advertising expenditure among influential companies was collected by the Nikkei Advertising Research Group from a target group consisting of 1500 leading companies, with 274 companies responding, producing a response rate of 18.3%.
Back in November 2005, Tokyo-based Image City announced the beta launch of MYUTA, a new service allowing subscribers to store their digital music files (for their own personal use) on a central server. A key feature of the service was the capability for subscribers to access and play the stored music tracks on their mobile phones. JASRAC immediately stepped in and contacted Image City, claiming the service required its approval in order to launch. Image City disagreed, saying the service was outside of JASRAC’s domain, and the stage was set for a legal battle.
Here’s a great article, from the cover of Nikkei Electronics Asia June edition, detailing the wireless transmission of electric power. As we see more services and functions for mobile devices, which naturally leads to increased usage, the demand for more battery power has clearly become an issue. Quick wireless power re-charges stations, in convenient locations, may well prove to be a more effective and popular choice to the methanol alternative.
