Nokia Recruits Japanese Mobile Developers
We spent an afternoon at the Symbian Workshop in Tokyo recently and chatted with Nokia’s Gerard Bruen, Director of Series 60 and Alliance Partners. Tune in for a surprisingly candid discussion about what the big push was for this event.. “the Japanese market is sophisticated, the developers have a good understanding, there is a good eco-system already built around financially stable developers and content owners and we should utilize that.. Nokia has the reach to go global, and to take them global”. A must see interview for wireless developers everywhere who are planning their mobile business strategy.
While there’s gobs of money being made with mail, ring tones, screen savers, mobile coupons, Hello Kitty downloads, and other wireless entertainment services, at least one startup is trying to bring a little mobile convenience to a hitherto largely unexploited area: the burgeoning healthcare market. If you’ve got a chronic disease (think diabetes) that requires hour-to-hour management for issues such as dietary intake, calorie counting, or vital sign monitoring and input, Tokyo-based Mobile Healthcare Inc. thinks that using your keitai is an obvious solution. But the challenges include not only technology and patient education, but also convincing Japan’s hidebound, ultraconservative health system that mobicare makes sense. Full Program Run-time 13:18
Japan’s wireless broadband networks are rapidly accelerating with the development of cutting-edge technologies and Wireless Japan 2003 is the place to see it all. We’ve put together quite a package from this year’s show, including an on-camera interview with Vodafone Global Content Services’ Tim Harrison on his view on how V-Live is different from i-mode. We grabbed shots of Sanyo’s OLED 3G concept-model handsets and KDDI Labs’ new TV-Mobile unit; and caught up with Gartner Japan’s Mitsuyama-san who gave us her take on this year’s conference. Full Program Run-time 15:35
Daniel Scuka is a familiar face to the Wireless Watch Japan community not only as the co-founder and visionary behind the media project, but also as the site’s video host. Prior to his move to the business manager’s seat at WWJ (as well as a relo to Frankfurt), Daniel organized a team of journalist successors to take over WWJ in Tokyo. Newly joined reporter and video host John Alderman interviewed him just before he left. Daniel shared the ideas the spurred him to create Wireless Watch Japan, the activity that still inspires him, and his forecast for the future of the mobile Internet in Japan. This program is a great, quick overview of what makes Japan the world’s most exciting market and an important test-bed for the globe’s mobile industry. Full Program Run-time 14:35
The WWJ team spent a day at the Gartner Predicts conference held inTokyo July 3; We came, we saw, we interviewed. The conference was a five-section event covering worldwide telecom trends and what is (maybe) going to happen in Japan. Note that we didn’t catch Gartner’s top analysts during breaks between the (generally interesting) presentations: we corralled them downstairs afterwards where we could fire off the questions we really wanted to ask. Our feature interview with Dean Eyers, Gartner Group vice president and worldwide director telecommunications, commented on the Japan vs. over-seas user profile, and offers an insight on the combination of WLAN and WCDMA for handsets of the future. Full Program Run-time 6:25
The 1imc is the first-ever gathering of everyone interested in moblogging, whether that interest is primarily in developing tools, platforms and standards to enable the practice, marketing products and services to support it, or in actually going out and doing it! This event is dedicated to the theory and experience of mobile Web publishing, with sessions focused on both technical and social aspects of this exploding practice. This Conference was explicitly chartered to introduce those developing the tools to those using them, and vice versa, so that interfaces and feature sets can be better tuned to the needs and desires of the emerging user base. Full Program Run-time 19:49
We’re hard at work preparing our new site and July line-up which will include an exclusive look at NTT DoCoMo’s 505i-series launch event held in Tokyo to announce the latest of their super-sophisticated i-mode handsets, visits with several mobile technology-focused ventures being fledged at Tokyo’s Venture Habitat, and a profile of a unique mobile health-care management service. Make sure you’re subscribed to the Wireless Watch Japan mailing list to stay up-to-date on our relaunch activities and to receive the first issue of the new and improved WWJ mail magazine.
Nooper.com is an unlikely name for a technology that aims to turbocharge mobile mail. The system lets users specify events – “Noopies” – and then receive notification (as well as content) via keitai; Noopies can be anything – a Mail Checker Noopie alerts you when your corporate account gets a new mail, a Reminder Noopie tells you when rain is more than 40% likely (Remember your kasa!), and a List Noopie keeps you in touch with multiple buddies on a mailing list. The jury’s still out on whether Nooper can succeed in Japan’s roiling mobile market, but if they can succeed here, they can probably succeed anywhere. Full Program Run-time 16:48
This week, WWJ sits down with Sony Ericsson to look into the design process that animates Japan’s ubercool handset industry. We ask about product planning, design peculiarities of the Japanese market, development for overseas, and about new technologies – like removable memory and swivel cameras. Sony Ericsson is one of Japan’s top handset factories and their new-last-week 505i handset for DoCoMo is the only one with a 1.3-megapixel camera. If there’s something these folks don’t know about creating handsets, it’s not worth knowing. Full Program Run-Time 22:13
Sure, you can access your bank account balance and buy stuff via celly, but what happens if you loose your handset and some bad dude gets your PIN number? And remember: in Japan, tens of thousands of keitais are lost each year. But one thing the baddies (except for certain famous movie serial cannibals) can’t steal is your face – and today we show you an innovative face-recognition system that’s been ported to mobile phones. “Kaopass” works well and demonstrates one possibility for keitai security in the future. Full Program Run-Time 13:25