2g
2g

2g

The Challenges -and Potential- of 3G

Currently, increased competition and stagnating economies have helped drive down end-user prices and voice service has become a commodity. While call minutes are increasing, ARPU is failing to keep pace with growing costs and shrinking margins. The 3G business case says that every incremental dollar spent on the network must produce a return on investment almost overnight. In the Asia-Pacific, Pyramid Research says 3G mobile subscribers will jump from 21 million in 2002 to 162 million in 2008.

Korea Sets Lower Rates for 3G

From Monday, Seoulites can enjoy W-CDMA services at a similar rate to the current 2G phones. In an effort to build awareness of 3G phones, the private and public sectors are taking part in various incentives. SK Telecom’s subscription fee is 50,000 won, and it will collect 20 won for 10-second voice calls in addition to 14,000 won in basic monthly charges. SK will offer video call services for free in March, but will charge a monthly fee to be fixed later.

DoCoMo Unveils Ultimate 3G Phones: FOMA 900i Series

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regionalsubsidiaries today unveiled the FOMA 900i series, the most advanced-ever 3G FOMA i-mode mobile phones, featuring a Macromedia Flash-equipped browser, HTML e-mailand avatar-capable videophone. Compared with the original series of FOMA phones, 900imodels offer three times longer standby and weigh 20 percent less. The 900i series will boast the first 3G phones equipped with a Macromedia Flash browserfor the enjoyment of rich content enhanced with highly fluid animation. Flash applicationsof up to 100K are possible, compared with 20K in 2G mova 505i series. The new serieswill also handle richer, more sophisticated online games. Java-based i-appli applications offer a 400K scratch pad and have a maximum capacity of 100K forcontent/archiving, compared with 200K and 30K in existing models.

DoCoMo Unveils FOMA 900i 3G i-mode Phones

“This is just the beginning,” Takeshi Natsuno, Managing Director of DoCoMo’s i-mode Planning Department, told Wireless Watch of the new flagship 5 FOMA 900i handsets that DoCoMo showed today and that should be released in or around February 2004. Before about 600 journalists, Natsuno’s message was that, after two years of battling battery/bulk problems, here finally, were 3G phones capable of 2G performance in terms of standby time and weight. But beyond this, DoCoMo has clearly worked hard to differentiate the phones from being more than “Super 505i” and hinted that the company was considering lowering data packet rates to compete with KDDI WIN and Vodafone K.K.’s recent Happy Packet rate cuts. But wow! What’s loaded in the the new fab 5, for example 500 Kbytes of gaming capability will be inevitably be the Final Fantasy for gamers (the game appears to be preloaded) and a real nightmare for competitors. Natsuno san, not known for being shy on stage at these sort of events, seemed to speak from the heart when he called the lineup the “best mobile phones in the world!” The critical question for DoCoMo, however, is differentiation from the already all-singing, all-dancing 505 series, and quite a few of our doubts were answered. But questions also remain. We’ll have a video program on the show, the phones and the figures behind the models up soon. Before that, here’s some of the upgraded low down on the fantatabulous 900is. And THEN there are the P900iV and the F900iT.

KDDI Joins FeliCa Bandwagon

The news is out that KDDI has decided to adopt Sony’s FeliCa, thus removing a major barrier to the contact less IC card’s promulgation outside of DoCoMo in Japan– and also bringing the technology into a major cdma carrier. For us at WWJ, this is the biggest news of the month! Last week we talked to Shusaku Maruko, Senior Manager of Sony’s FeliCa Business Center and got the lowdown on what FeliCa will be. Please wait for that program, and before that, we will post the only FeliCA i-mode service video available for you, our loyal subscribers, around in the world on or around December 17. Sorry to hype this, but you just can’t get our action anywhere else in the world and, Goddam, we are so happy!

DoCoMo Pre-Christmas Press Briefing

DoCoMo Pre-Christmas Press BriefingDoCoMo Chieftain Tachikawa gave his final press conference of the year and looked happier and more relaxed than we’ve seen him for some time. And he should. After good first half financials and FOMA finally taking off, he was able to give a good spin on DoCoMo’s performance and managed to sling an arrow at Microsoft, as only a spin-off from a monopoly can! Japan’s phone market unexpectedly achieved solid 1H growth; net additions were almost the same 1H 03. 2H was down, but overall growth for DoCoMo will be 80 percent of 02. Japan’s phone market is NOT saturated. DoCoMo still thinks it will achieve 8 percent growth. Non-voice is growing, as well as voice. Japan’s penetration rate still lower than Europe. DoCoMo still sees growth opportunities. Full Program Run-time 20:24