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2006: Japan's Year of the FeliCa eWallet Phone

2006: Japan's Year of the FeliCa eWallet PhoneAccording to the ancient Chinese calendar, 2006 is The Year of the Dog. More importantly, it’s shaping up to be The Year of the eWallet. Launched last summer, DoCoMo’s FeliCa-based wallet phones are a growing success and competitors Vodafone and KDDI have scrambled to launch their own FeliCa-equipped models.

A recent survey points to wide consumer satisfaction and even the BBC have started reporting on Osaifu Keitai (wallet phones). The BBC’s ‘Click Online’ producer caught up with me last month in Tokyo; they were in town to cover CEATEC, but also wanted the tech and business-model details on DoCoMo’s ‘i-mode FeliCa‘ mobile service, as well as how people are using them. The result was a pretty good TV programme (if I may say so myself), which you can watch on the Click Online site(WWJ subscribers log in for full story).

DoCoMo Subscribers Top 50 Million

NTT DoCoMo have just announced that subscribers to the companies mobile phone services exceeded 50 million today, about three years and 10 months after surpassing 40 million. DoCoMo subscribers refer to 2G mova, 3G FOMA and DoPa Single Service customers. In the first 10 years after DoCoMo began offering cellular services in 1979, subscribers grew at an average net rate of roughly 30,000 per year. From 1993, two years after DoCoMo launched its 2G mova service, the average annual net gain to the present time has been about four million subscribers.

Toshiba to Resume 2G Sales in EU

Toshiba Corp. is to reintroduce 2G mobile phones in the European market in October to benefit from strong local demand for such handsets, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing company sources. Toshiba has been overhauling its overseas cell phone business as part of efforts to reduce losses from the handset division. In fiscal 2004, the company withdrew from the 2G handset business in North America and China because of poor local sales.

Telstra Does 3G Soft Launch

Telstra will today become only the second telco in Australia to offer 3G mobile services, but the low-key launch reflects the changed expectations since Hutchison Telecom made a glitzy debut in 2003. Telstra’s i-mode service – which has been available for six months on the GSM network – is already offering 211 sites, although not all of them will be available on the 3G service straight away. “The sheer variety and depth of services available gives Telstra a big head start from other operators that have a more limited scope of services,” said tech research firm Ovum.

DoCoMo Announces New Concept Phone

NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson have introduced a new concept model called the RADIDEN, claiming the world’s first cell phone that has been equipped with a three-band AM/FM/TV tuner. The handset incorporates a dual-front design: one side can be used as a cell phone, and on the other side is a radio designed for the 2G MOVA network. The radio features easy-to-select channels, a dedicated single-color sub-display (16.7×23.1mm), as well as visible buttons allowing the user to use i-mode while listening to the radio.

Renesas Starts Sample Shipments of Dual-Mode Chips Developed With NTT DoCoMo

Renesas Technology Corp. today announced it has started shipping evaluation samples of a single-chip LSI, jointly developed with NTT DoCoMo, Inc. for dual-mode mobile handsets supporting W-CDMA (3G) and GSM/GPRS (2G) systems. Evaluation samples have been available for customers since the end of July 2005. With technological development investment from NTT DoCoMo since July 2004, the jointly developed LSI is expected to promote the global use of FOMA(R) and similar 3G mobile handsets. It also reduces costs by incorporating a dual baseband processor handling W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS systems together with a Renesas Technology SH-Mobile application processor.

DoCoMo 3G Adds 1.2 Million in July

The latest subscriber numbers are in and DoCoMo added an impressive 1,196,400 new 3G accounts in the month of July compared to rival KDDI/au, which only gained 312,000 new customers for their CDMA 1X service in the same period. Overall, however, KDDI managed to sign up a total of 230,500 new customers (2G + 3G) to beat DoCoMo’s 229,800 net additions. Meanwhile, Vodafone gained 18,000 more customers than it lost in July, with the stats showing they added 130,100 new 3G customers.

Mobile Music Best Practices from Japan and Korea

While Japan’s music market is second only to the US, with $3.5 bn in CD sales, it ranks first in mobile music in terms of market size, service penetration and sophistication. Japanese record labels have managed a powerful comeback from their failure in the wild, MIDI ring tone-based 2G music market to massive success in the master-rights-based "Chaku-uta" 3G universe. They already own a 20-percent share of Japan’s $1-billion-plus mobile music market. How did they pull off this stunning achievement? The labels identified their core assets in the mobile universe: trust and convenience.

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest Viewpoint is based on "Mobile Music Best Practices from Japan and Korea," a 103-page report recently released by Vectis International. WWJ subscribers login to read the article and receive a special 10% discount coupon!!

Researched and written over a period of several months by Simon Bureau, Managing Director and Editor, and Benjamin Joffe, Japan Market Analyst — two of the saviest mobile industry watchers in Asia — Vectis’ "Mobile Music Best Practices" provides 103 pages of sharp and critical analysis covering mobile music downloading as it has developed in the world’s top two wireless markets. With reference to carriers, content providers, networks, terminals, pricing, marketing and end-user behavior, "Mobile Music" is a must-read for anyone involved in planning and commercializing on-the-go music services anywhere.

Samsung's SCH-V670 Roaming Handset

Samsung Electronics have announced the release of their SCH-V670 handset [ .jpg image ], which apparently provides automatic roaming services [Via: Anycall?] between Korea and Japan. The specs indicate it runs on an EV-DO chipset, supports .PDF file viewing, has an integrated MP3 player and touts a “New Concept” Flash-based UI. It even has a GPS support function to help those Korean businessmen WWJ sometimes sees wondering around downtown Tokyo!

Vodafone K.K. Acquires New 3G Trial License for 1.7GHz Spectrum

Vodafone K.K. announced today that it has acquired a preliminary license from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, which was applied for on 27 April 2005, to operate W-CDMA experimental radio stations on the 1.7GHz frequency band, marking the first time for an existing mobile operator in Japan to receive such a license. Vodafone K.K. currently offers 3G services on the 2GHz frequency band. However, due to an increasing number of 3G customer contracts and the proliferation of packet communication flat-rate services, a rapid increase in 3G traffic is expected, which would make current 2GHz frequency band capacity insufficient.