Hundreds of IC chips hidden in a mobile phone contain a minuscule amount of gold in their plastic package, in the shape of internal bonding wires. This gold can be extracted quite easily (well, compared to the traditional gold mines where thousands of emanciated mine slaves toiled), and is much appreciated by the mobile shop folks as a windfall. The only problem is to collect enough discarded mobile phones.
Faith Inc. have announced they will take the lead position in a joint venture with game publishers Taito and Square Enix. The three companies have founded a new company, Brave Inc., capitalized at 80 mn yen, with 1,600 shares issued and 14 full-time employees. The holding structure shows 60 percent was invested by Faith Inc., 30 percent from Taito and the remaining 10 percent coming from Square Enix.
NTT DoCoMo stock has been trading at all-time lows, however, DoCoMo is increasingly being viewed as a value play and it may be breaking out of its trading funk. Its ordinary shares shot up 3.51% today to close at 177,000 yen on strong volume not seen since a breakout on January 5th this year when it traded at 193,000 yen.
Intel Capital, Intel Corp.’s investment division, announced at a press conference held in Tokyo that it has invested in Bitwallet, Inc., a service provider of e-money EDY. Intel Capital has bought convertible bonds worth 5 billion jpy. According to the announcement Intel plans to contribute to the penetration of electronic money services not only in Japan but also throughout the world. Bitwallet plans to allocate the investment to procure reader/writer terminals to be used at Edy affiliated stores, and terminals to be used for payment business and by major distributors.
This is significant — Bitwallet is the joint venture established by DoCoMo, Sony and more than 35 banks, travel agencies, technology companies, etc. Bitwallet now has a banking license in Japan and serves as the e-money cash issuer and payment settlement operator. This investment from Intel VC — one of the first from an outside pure-VC-capital-growth-seeking partner into the JV — means that someone outside Japan also sees the huge potential in Felica/IC cash payments that DoCoMo and KDDI also see — Eds
NEC Telecom, one of the only really active Japanese handset makers in China, regards China as its most important overseas market amid personnel changes and the retreat of other Japanese firms. So says Ken Lu, the new president of NEC Telecom China. “Global expansion is a focus for NEC Telecom in the world and China is a priority in that expansion,” said Lu yesterday.
Vodafone K.K. has announced that it will commence nationwide sales this weekend of the Vodafone 904SH. This 3G handset by Sharp features the industry’s first VGA liquid crystal display, four times the resolution of current QVGA, making it possible to reproduce visuals and render small characters with more vividness and clarity than before. The model will also support new services and features, such as Face Recognition for enhanced privacy protection, Bluetooth and their Motion Control Sensor capable of measuring handset posture in all directions in 3D a popular function for mobile gaming.
