Opera Software and KDDI have announced a renewal of their commitment to include the Opera mobile browser on KDDI’s 3G handsets in Japan. KDDI and Opera first entered into a partnership in August 2004 to fulfill the promise of 3G capabilities in Japan, and the browser has since been included on 27 KDDI phones.
This tid-bit has been around for awhile now, but in case you missed it: “In their ever continuing effort to re-educate the world about the wholesome nutritional value of their produce, McDonald’s have taken a step forward in Japan and applied a clever bit of technology to bring the nutritional label into the 21st century. Each burger now comes equipped with its own QR code printed on the wrapper which navigates you to an online site where you can see the amount of calories and fat you are consuming.” Information is available both for individual items and full-meal deals.
KDDI has just added a few tasty tidbits on their recent announcements: the new W43S handset by Sony Ericsson is ready to roll as of Friday, 15 September, and they will have some interesting new BREW titles (including mobile multiplayers) on display at next week’s Tokyo Game Show. As an apparent counter measure to the free iPod Nano ‘bribe’ just announced by SoftBank Mobile, KDDI has also introduced the new “Large Satisfaction Campaign,” which will offer a variety of prizes for new users.. whew!
To celebrate the upcoming official re-branding of Vodafone KK to SoftBank Mobile, due for 1 October, we just received a press release [.PDF in Japanese] announcing the company will offer – starting today – a free 2-GB iPod nano to customers who buy their 705sh handset. We expected to hear more from the folks in Shiodome about their mobile number portability battle plan and this looks like a good start. We also should point out that Vodafone have already been selling the best example of an iPhone, the V803T by Toshiba, in Japan for well over a year now.
Japan’s eAccess Ltd. said on Monday its wireless unit will borrow its bigger rival NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s network to offer a nationwide cellphone service. eAccess’ mobile unit will roam on DoCoMo’s network in areas outside the major cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. The agreement will helps eAccess launch a nationwide voice service in March 2008 before completing its own network. Prior to the nationwide mobile phone service, eAccess aims to offer wireless data service in March 2007.
We’re pleased to see that OboPay has closed its second round of funding lead by $7 mn from none other than Qualcomm! That would indicate it’s quite likely we’ll see a strong push for their BREW-based P2P mobile commerce application in the future. This news also seems to be at least somewhat disruptive to the existing embedded IC chip effort lead by Sony and Phillips. As both KDDI/au and Vodafone (almost SoftBank Mobile) are running on Qualcomm’s chipset in Japan, this development might present them with a viable alternative to paying license fees to FeliCa Networks as well…
