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Major Mobile Commerce Trials Announced

Major Mobile Commerce Trials AnnouncedA group of major m-commerce companies announced a large-scale U.S. trial last week to include contactless payment, mobile content and premium arena services at Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The companies claim the trial will be the first large-scale test of next-generation mobile-phone applications in North America. The grouping includes Chase, Cingular Wireless, Nokia, Philips, Visa USA and others. The contactless payment functionality will be based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology first developed by Sony and Philips. Other NFC trials are underway in Germany and France.

Wireless Watchers will know that the Sony/Philips NFC technology is also powering the super-successful “FeliCa”-branded mobile contactless payment services in Japan and has been adopted by NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone as the de facto market standard for m-commerce, e-wallets, transportation and other peer-to-peer data transfer services. Sony first deployed NFC on the Octopus card in Hong Kong in 1997 and rolled their mobile handset trial ran in Japan in December 2003 — see WWJ video here. Today, over 7 million FeliCa-enabled phones have already been sold by DoCoMo alone.

One might think the two-year jump on deployment and commercial experience, not to mention brand equity, in Japan would motivate Sony to transplant an obvious success story from Tokyo to markets elsewhere. Instead, it looks like the wheel is being reinvented all over again.

Vodafone Japan Launches Visto Push Mail

Vodafone Japan Launches Visto Push MailYesterday, Vodafone Japan announced ‘Office Mail’ a new, secure push-mail corporate solution for 3G powered by Visto. Japan’s DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone have never had a lot of success in selling mobile applications to the corporate market due to the carriers’ overwhelming focus on the highly profitable consumer market. Perhaps Vodafone’s selection of a cool Nokia Symbian phone and the promise of more Nokia devices having a buttoned-down, made-overseas, cool business image will get corporate users bugging their IT managers to call Big Red and sign up for Office Mail.

Vodafone’s Office Mail is powered by the Visto Mobile Solution platform, and Vodafone K.K. says it will be able to offer subscribers secure, real-time, two-way delivery of email, contacts and calendars to select phones, starting with the new 702NK II, also known as the Nokia 6680 Smartphone. Office Mail is targeted at business professionals at large and small companies and SOHOs as well as at consumers.

3G Network Limitations Define Mobile TV

3G Network Limitations Define Mobile TVIt’s rare for WWJ editors, a jaded bunch, to get too excited about new service announcements, but on 6 December, we jumped on this fresh Vodafone press release that seemed to herald the emergence of the rather cool, made-in-Japan ‘Vodafone Live! BB’ (BB= broadband) music- and video-download service into the Group’s European markets. Vodafone live! BB uses the ‘i-Pod model’ to get large media files onto mobile phones, avoiding network traffic fees and should be, we have always thought, a no-brainer for export to Vodafone Opcos outside Japan. Don’t mobilers everywhere want to save on packet/data fees and get audio and DVD-quality video onto their handsets?

Korean 3G Phone Finally Hits Japan Market

Korean 3G Phone Finally Hits Japan MarketKDDI/au has announced the roll-out of their A1405PT, made by Pantech & Curitel, will begin today in the Hokkaido region and throughout all areas of Japan over the weekend. The phone was jointly developed with KDDI and marks the first entry of a Korean maker’s handset into the Japanese market. Touted, at 98 grams, as the ‘lightest 3G handset’ available in the market, it comes with a limited set of features (only a VGA camera, for example), but it does have an organic EL “Stream Screen” sub-display and has a built-in crime prevention buzzer function, a feature which was also just introduced by DoCoMo (for good reason).

WWJ has been tracking rumours and hints on the entry of Korean terminals for some time now but this is hard fact on the ground. We have seen Sanyo and Casio pushing into the U.S. market along with Sharp and NEC making moves in Europe. It’s clearly becoming a two-way street with the recent launch of Motorola’s M-1000 with DoCoMo, who have also indicated that LG and Nokia models are in the pipeline.

KDDI Designing Studio Unveils Prototype Handsets

KDDI Designing Studio Unveils Prototype HandsetsThe latest models from KDDI’s au Design Project went on display this month following in the footsteps of past designer models like the InfoBar, the Talby and the Penck. Visiting Harajuku’s ultratrendy Designing Studio showroom last weekend we got a peek into the future with several new mock-ups attracting attention. Celebrating what was billed as “Tokyo Designer’s New Concept Model Week 2005,” the phone company unveiled several previously unseen prototypes, including the Machina [.jpg] and the Hexagon [.jpg], which were displayed under glass at a safe distance from fashionistas and tech journalists alike.

KDDI has hired several designers from outside the traditional OEM supply chain to help them develop innovative new models or what the company calls “communication tools that merge fashion with portability.” Takashi Nikaido, a former Casio team leader who worked on the original G-SHOCK watch design is one of them. His ‘Rotary Design’ (photo right), circa 2001, was on view along with the even more futuristic ‘Wearable’ 3-piece concept [.jpg] which he developed the same year. In 2003, Marc Newson created KDDI/au’s Talby based at least in part on an earlier design model, the InfoBar, designed by Naoto Fukasawa, who also produced the Penck. Ichiro Iwasaki, who spent several years at the Sony Design Center, created the Grappa Slider and Wallet styles and Ichiro Higashiizumi also had his two Apollo concept handsets on show.

DoCoMo Credit-Card Site Soft Launch

DoCoMo credit cardOn 8 November, DoCoMo said they would start offering a new FeliCa-compatible credit card, called the ‘iD card‘ (that’s ‘i’ and in ‘i-mode’ and — we guess — ‘D’ as in ‘dominant market position’), on 1 December. The iD card will allow i-moders to make credit card payments with a FeliCa eWallet phone; Big D said the payment procedure will be “as simple as waving the phone in front of dedicated reader/writers at stores.” Now, it looks like their Flash-heavy, groovy, dedicated iD-card website is now open, trolling for prospective customers.

When you’re the dominant wireless carrier in the market, and you’ve invested billions in building a 3G network, but hoped-for packet revenues collapse when your No. 1 competitor beats you up with flat-rate pricing, launching your own credit-card brand is a sensible option. Welcome to the ultra-high-tech, but old-fashioned-business-model, future..