Sign of the Times
Sign of the Times

Sign of the Times

Mobile Music Moves Off-Portal

Ever since the first ringtone sites began appearing on NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode menu back in 1999, most mobile music content providers in Japan have pushed to have their services appear on the ‘main menu’ of the wireless carriers. This ‘closed garden’ model has been widely criticized for putting too much power in the hands of the wireless carrier. However, it has still been attractive to CPs because of the enormous traffic that comes from the carrier’s menu, as well as the convenience of having customer billing handled by the carrier.

For the past seven years, CPs have flooded Japan’s three major wireless carriers with thick, 150-page proposals, in the hopes of getting their ringtone, mastertone, or other content listed on the menu. Despite the high barrier of entry and heavy restrictions, this method has until recently been the preferred way to operate a mobile music service in Japan.

Maintain Your Molars with Your Mobile

Nobody likes going to the dentist, but there have been a couple of dental-related mobile services recently released in Japan that make the whole ordeal that bit less painful. First is Let’s go to the dentist!, a mobile dentist search. Not only can you search and find dental clinics all over Japan, you can also search for specialist dentists and view their locations on a map. After your visit, you can write a review of the whole ordeal to receive points which you can swap for goods or redeem as cashback on your next visit.

NEC Handset Shipment Est. Down 8%

NEC Corp. announced on Tuesday that it’s expecting to ship 5.5 million mobile phones in the year to March 31st 2007, down 8 percent from its previous estimate of 6 million phones. The company also said it now expects to post a loss of less than 40 billion yen ($333 million) in the cellphone business in fiscal2006/07, an improvement over its previous estimate of a loss of 50 billion yen.

Contextual Ad Technology for Mobile

According to a recent article from Nikkei Electronics, Overture and NTT Data have developed a contextual advertisement suite designed for mobile. The companies started distributing their “Contents-Match Mobile” beta version to a mobile portal run by Recruit Japan last week. The story also mentions that this offering claims to be world’s first contextual ad offering developed specifically for mobile phone websites.

ITU to make WiMAX a 3G standard

WiMAX Day, a newsletter published by the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance, reported the ITU Working Party 8F met in Cameroon at the end of January to look at IMT-2000 and systems beyond IMT-2000. Such a move would bring considerable benefits by allowing WiMAX to operate in globally allocated frequency bands, enable global roaming and reduce equipment costs.