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NTT DoCoMo's Nakamura: New and Luke Warm!

In a series of subtle and not so subtle remarks that made it clear all is not well at NTT DoCoMo, new president and CEO Masao Nakamura vowed to recover the company’s tarnished record of delivering huge profits. He also said the company would plunge into Asia for global revenue expansion, just like ex-CEO Keiji Tachikawa vowed to do in 2001. Beyond that, Nakamura promised that DoCoMo would put the customer first — but then said he’d put the shareholder first; later, apparently contradicting the propaganda put out by i-mode boss Takeshi Natsuno last week, he said he wasn’t sure how big the market for FeliCa was going to be. But there was plenty of new news broached by Nakamura and he’s set some hard targets in his (somewhat foggy) sights.

Mobile Digital TV: Not (Yet) to a 3G Celly

Today, Portable Reportable looks at the future of cell phone broadcasting and consider what will happen when cell phones will be able to received digital TV broadcasts. NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have quite different plans on how consumers will use digital TV. KDDI appears to be planning to allow the handset to receive digiTV and then use the phone’s 3G data connection as the viewer feedback, marketing, and sales channel — similar to how the FM Keitai works now with analog radio and the preinstalled BREW application.
Full program run-time: 5:01Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

NTT DoCoMo's FeliCa Mobile Wallet Launch

The Mobile Wallet is nearly in our pockets. In what promises to be just the first ripple in a wave of material promoting FeliCa, Takeshi Natsuno, managing director of DoCoMo’s i-mode Planning Department, today took the covers off the first four FeliCa handsets that will be coming into stores this July. Regular Wireless Watchers will know we have been tracking this story over the last 6 months starting with the trial-launch video program Here.

Multimedia Cellys: FM Keitai Rocks!

The “FM Keitai,” the most successful FM radio cell phone on planet Earth, is rocking the airwaves in Tokyo. There are over 450,000 users and DJs and announcers are voicing special messages intended just for phone listeners: “Please press the ‘Star’ button to get more information on product X.” Audio-loving mobilers can also download a digital clip of the currently playing song, thanks to BREW. It’s a media marketing dream come true, and it’s only the beginning. Full program run-time: 3:58

Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

Multimedia Cellys: TV and FM Go Mobile

If you’ve been watching Japan technology news lately — or better yet, logging onto WirelessWatch.jp — you’ll have noticed an increasing amount of coverage devoted to the new multimedia cell phones. These are basically cell phones that have been adapted to include analog TV and FM radio broadcast receiver chips. The idea is to integrate the TV or radio receiver chip into the phone to enable mobile users to watch regular terrestrial TV broadcasts or listen to FM radio. Full program run-time: 4:52

Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

Japan Cell Phones: Most Individualized, Intimate Technology

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) isn’t particularly renowned for exciting, fun-to-read reports. The global standards body tends to produce authoritative but somewhat plodding publications that delve into the arcana of topics like radio spectrum management and regulatory trends. But a recent case study examining how Japan’s mobile Internet works and highlighting some of the key technology and applications driving 3G is refreshingly non-academic, not to mention pretty darn accurate.