Sign of the Times
Sign of the Times

Sign of the Times

Micropayments Fuel M-Commerce

The global mobile commerce market excluding mobile entertainment, will become a $40bn industry by 2009, fuelled by a growth in micropayment volumes, according to a new study from Juniper Research. The purchase of tickets (such as car parking and cinema tickets) using the mobile phone, will dominate the growth in m-commerce. Mobile users have started already to show interest in ticketing particularly in Europe and Japan, while in the retail sector, initial applications are geared towards vending machines, but this will see slow growth.

KDDI, Sanyo Win 3G CDMA Awards

The 3G CDMA award winners were announced in Miami last night and several Japanese companies are coming home with some shiny hardware. KDDI for International Leadership; winning top share of net subscriber increase in the Japanese market and its leadership in 3G in Japan, as well as for its launch of 1xEV-DO services, branded as WIN. Sanyo Electric won the Subscriber Technology Innovation award for their innovative Infobar handset design.

Heavy Traffic Slows WWJ Site

It appears that demand for our latest Sony PSP video story has set new WWJ site traffic records, thanks Tech-Crunch & Boing Boing, and caused a severe slow-down in loading pages over the last half day. There is, unfortunately, little we can do to boost our server in the short term and request that visitors remain patient, perhaps checking back periodically.

KTF, Dentsu Setup Mobile Ad JV

KTF Co., South Korea’s second-largest mobile phone operator, said Thursday its board decided to form a joint venture with Dentsu Inc., Japan’s biggest advertising company, to produce and sell advertisements on cell phones. KTF will invest 2.5 billion won (US$2.2 million) in the Seoul-based joint venture and hold a 51-percent stake, the venture will begin operations in November this year, KTF said.

Panasonic and Beyond 3G

The Japan booth at ITU Telecom Asia 2004 is showing off a super-cool concept model by Panasonic, and we’re jealous..!!! No doubt they will have it on display here in Tokyo during CEATEC next month as well, and WWJ’s looking forward to taking a test-drive with video. Also on display: a few GSM models, made by Sanyo, which are apparently much more likely to roll-out overseas sometime soon.

Samsung's 1.5-GB HDD Phone

Samsung Electronics have unveiled the SPH-V5400 handset [.jpg image], the first-ever mobile phone with an internal hard disc drive. The company’s latest innovation, which also comes with a mega-pixel camera, is currently being exhibited at ITU Telecom Asia 2004. The phone is equipped with a 1-inch diagonal, 1.5-GB hard disc drive; conventional cellys have a maximum of about 100MB of RAM memory. The breakthrough product will be available for Korean consumers in mid-September.

Mobile Phone Sales Set Record Pace

Global sales of mobile telephones surged a record 35 percent to 156 million units in the second quarter from the same period in 2003, a study published by the US research group Gartner showed. According to the study, more than 300 million handsets were sold between January and June, leading to a full-year sales forecast of at least 620 million units, compared with 520 million in 2003.

Nokia Building 3G Factory in China

Nokia plans to locate its second global 3G equipment manufacturing site in China. By choosing China, Nokia will become the latest in a stream of major mobile telecoms gear makers – including Germany’s Siemens and Canada’s Nortel Networks – to build a 3G manufacturing facility in the country. Nokia already has a 3G research and development centre in Suzhou, the centre employs more than 100 engineers, and is “expanding” its headcount.

Vodafone Japan Appoints New CEO

Vodafone Holdings K.K. and Vodafone K.K. jointly announce that their respective Boards of Directors today selected Shiro Tsuda to be the next President and Chief Executive Officer and Representative Executive Officer of Vodafone K.K. as of 1 December. [.pdf]. Effective immediately, Shiro Tsuda will act as an Executive Officer for Vodafone Holdings K.K. and Vodafone K.K. until he assumes his position. Shiro Tsuda was formerly Senior Executive Vice President at NTT DoCoMo, Inc.