This past week, WWJ’s own Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, our hard-working director of digital media (and pretty much everything else in our humble shop), appeared on US Web radio program "Into Tomorrow," hosted by Dave Graveline. Dave and his crew pop over to Tokyo each year for the annual CEATEC consumer tech show, and he makes it his business to hook up with a slate of guests who can provide insidery gen on what’s happening in Japan…
NTT DoCoMo may seek partners in China after the Chinese government issues licenses for high-speed networks to expand in the world’s biggest mobile phone market. One of the standards, called W- CDMA, is the same as the platform adopted by DoCoMo in Japan. “We have to see what kind of technology the operators will use,” Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president of multimedia services at Tokyo-based DoCoMo, said in an interview broadcast today. “After that, we can decide what kind of strategic alliance we’re going to make.”
NTT DoCoMo aims to expand in finance and other industries to offset slowing growth in mobile phone services. “If DoCoMo is a mobile phone company in five years, our growth will be limited,” said Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s vice president of multimedia services, said in an interview. “My expectation is to make DoCoMo a more diversified company.” Natsuno, who oversaw the debut of i-mode in 1999, last month introduced the DCMX credit card service that lets customers use handsets to pay for goods and services such as groceries and taxis. The company expects the service to generate as much as 100 billion yen ($912 million) in annual sales in three years.
DCMX: Is it a phone that can buy stuff or a credit card that can make calls? NTT DoCoMo is hoping that millions of spend-free consumers won’t know or care about the distinction and will simply use the new ‘DCMX’ credit-card phone for, well, pretty much everything. For small, daily purchases — like a six-pack and a take-out bento lunch — use the phone’s e-money FeliCa chip with no authentication required; for larger buys (a cool Louis Vuitton bag from the Omotesando boutique), use the DCMX credit-card function with a swipe and a PIN code; later, the phone will eyeball you for biometric authorization. “We wish to combine telecoms with financial services,” says DoCoMo’s Mr i-mode, Takeshi Natsuno, in today’s video program — and if there’s a cellco anywhere in the world that can afford the value-chain coordination costs to deploy a workable phone/credit card combo, it has to be NTT DoCoMo.DCMX is a logical progression from the carrier’s popular ‘o-saifu keitai’ IC-chip handsets that can store value onboard for small, daily purchases, and the launch announcement confirms DoCoMo’s strategic course aiming squarely at making the network-connected phone the payment method of choice for millions of Japanese. Maybe one day something this useful will be offered by carriers elsewhere?
Today’s WWJ video is full of gorgeous, uhm.. mobiles. This fall, DoCoMo introduced their new 701i models using… models. The 701i-series are stripped down (sans FeliCa) and sexed-up with the carrier’s new ‘i-Channel’ push service for customers too contrarian to even try i-mode. DoCoMo also introduced two hybrid FlashCast enabled designer units; the ‘stylish’ FOMA Dolce from Sharp and the GPS-enabled SA700iS from Sanyo. The Flash lite-based system delivers scrolling news, weather and other information and comes pre configured and already switched on thus showing how easy i-mode really is, according to Mr. i-mode, DoCoMo’s Takeshi Natsuno who took center-stage after the lovely ladies had everyone’s attention.
In a deal that puts a new spin on mobile music promotion in the Japanese market, DoCoMo announced a partnership with Tower Records Japan opting to buy 42 percent of the music retailer for 12.8 billion yen ($109 million). Scheduled to go through by late November, the deal will make DoCoMo Tower’s single largest shareholder. The music retailer operates 78 Tower Records stores and 31 Wave music outlets. Tower’s motto in Japan is "The Best Place to Find Music" but will DoCoMo find it the best place to create musical revenue?
Taking the stage at a Tokyo press conference November 8th, Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s multimedia services department, and Hiroyuki Fushitani, president and chief executive officer of Tower Records Japan, gave the press few details on their upcoming fusion of telecom and music marketing. Not surprisingly, projects center around DoCoMo’s Osaifu Ketai (mobile wallet) platform for 3G handsets. Users will be able to wave their mobile phones over displays at Tower stores to download coupons or purchase CDs, picking them up at the sales counter on their way out. From this winter phones equipped with DoCoMo’s ToruCa (toru, capture; Ca, card) information-capture service will include Tower reader/writer units to download news on favorite artists, special offers from music labels, ticket reservations, and other music-related information. Tower’s popular redeemable purchase point system will also migrate onto mobile phones.
