3G
3G

3G

Deconstructing 3G Culture

NTT DoCoMo took it square on the chin this week, announcing it would book extraordinary losses of 573 billion yen against its investments in three major foreign partners, KPN, AT&T Wireless, and Hutchison 3G. The company cited the slowdown in the global telecommunications market, and it would be natural to suspect the Sanno Park Tower strategists are back in their corner, applying ice and stitching wounds. Industry watchers, meanwhile, are having a field day. hOWEVER, this week’s write-down represents mere pachinko pocket change for DoCoMo, and, as potentially one of Japan’s (and by extension, the world’s) most profitable companies, the carrier is well on its way to creating something that the Europeans are still trying to sort out: a functioning W-CDMA network.

Wireless Java Wins IPO Riches

Wireless Java Wins IPO RichesWWJ has been focusing on mobile Java for the past few weeks — and with good reason. The pundits claim the interactivity and secure mobile execution environment provided by Java could be vital for making 3G data services pay off sooner rather than later. We visited then-pre-IPO software developer Net Village, creator of the “Remote Mail” Java-based mail appli. A couple of key facts emerged: Java boosts packet revenue for the carriers, the cost and complexity of deploying sophisticated Java applis may be beyond what the carriers themselves can do (economically), and Remote Mail is one cool app — 330,000 happy users can’t all be wrong! (See a live demo.) Oh — and NV’s IPO generated a modest 4.094 billion yen.

Japan Carriers' Consumer Focus the Only Focus

I was sitting in the DoCoMo shop in Machida last week waiting to cancel my second PHS data card (which we rarely use since we got a home WLAN), when it suddenly occurred to me: there’s no enterprise wireless data market in Japan because the carriers — yes, the **carriers** — don’t want one. NTT DoCoMo announced that consolidated revenues from “packet communications services” (read: i-mode) reached 715,600 million yen, up **102 percent** from the year before. Clearly, revenues from wireless data are booming, and if the corporate market has not yet been tapped, just think of the riches that will flow to the likes of DoCoMo, J-Phone, and KDDI when it is.

Japan Mobile Trivia that'll Separate the Pros from the Wanna-bes

All of Japan’s carriers devote an extraordinary amount of time, effort, and resources to creating marketing and sale materials designed to entice customers, boost sales, and — let’s be frank — brag about their networks and handsets. The Big Five (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI/Au, J-Phone, DDI Pocket, and Tu-Ka) produce monthly full-color catalogs touting the latest in handsets, networks and data services, calling plans and discounts, and customer support services. DoCoMo also conveniently produces a quarterly compendium of their monthly issues in English, while KDDI makes their calling plans and discount options widely available in English, Korean, Chinese, and several other languages. We combed through several carrier brochures and extracted some gems of info that are rarely if ever mentioned by English-language press, but that help to illustrate the depth and scope of the wireless business here. Without further ado, herewith we present WWJ’s first quarterly Review of Japan Keitai Trivia. Rabid Japan wireless devotees (and you know who you are) won’t want to miss this.

J-Phone Tells All! Well… a Whole Bunch, Anyway…

For the past several weeks, WWJ has been emailing J-Phone to set up an interview for our video newsmagazine. We finally settled on a date, and they asked us to submit our outline questions. J-Phone PR’s Matthew Nicholson responded to some of these earlier this week, and herewith we present a summary of his comments, wherein J-Phone reveals (almost all) about brand image, “plastic” roaming, and handling spam mail.

Handset Heaven; An exclusive look at i-mode's Club D

Handset Heaven; An exclusive look at i-mode's Club DThis week, Wireless Watch Japan ( WWJ ) was invited by NTT DoCoMo to visit their Club D Showroom, located on the 29th floor of corporate HQ in Tokyo. We do the intro from the FOMA F1 — that’s the race car that can communicate at 384 Kbps on a test track using FOMA, we play with 504i Java and 251i i-shot handsets and tried videoconferencing with the new 3G PDA by Sharp. This programme is pure eye-candy, and is not-to-be missed for the serious 3G wireless aficionado. Boy-o-boy-o-boy… it doesn’t get much better than this folks! After buying a soda via c-mode, we ask, “Why does DoCoMo spend so big to promote its technology?”