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SoftBank Mobile Summer Handsets

SoftBank Mobile announced their handset lineup for the ‘Summer of 2007 Sales Battle’ which will be available from the beginning of June. According to the company press release the 12 new 3G models are focused on style, quality and individuality, see the dedicated Flash site [in Japanese] Here. We note six handsets are coming from Sharp, including the 913SH slider while the upstart telco claims a scoop for the first deployment in Japan of Windows Mobile 6 on two of the units from HTC. Toshiba added three models with Samsung and Panasonic each contributing one. More details after the jump.

Mobile Monday Tokyo Demo Night Video

A Totally Vivid User Interface - Video DemoThe recent MoMo Tokyo event, held 23 April at KDDI’s Designing Studio, featured a mobile mash-up of presentations in the super-cool Demo Night format – which has been popular in other chapter cities. For Demo Night, a line-up of interesting mobile companies were allowed a 5- to 7-minute show & tell session for their mobile content or service offering – displayed on an actual handset and projected on the big screen for all to see. We’ve posted video of all six presentations for those of you who were unable to attend in person.

Tracey Northcott, VP at Enfour Group demonstrated Camera Jiten a native Brew dictionary application for instant scanning of English words giving their Japanese translations. Mandali Khalesi, CEO of Naviblog, showed-off how to find the closest Guinness with your mobile phone. David Collier, founder and CEO of Pikkle, demonstrated a new type of full-screen mobile flash service they provide to enable rich social networking. Nobuyoshi Noda, Mobile Division Deputy GM of Adways, gave an overview of the Mobile Affiliate Advertisement Smart-C product. Tim Smith, Director of Freeverse Consulting, introduced Malibu IVP, a middleware approach to creating useful and viable 3G videocall applications and Hiroshi Oda, VP Corporate Communications from CIAJ, announced that CEATEC JAPAN 2007 will launch a new special exhibit area under the theme of Digital Contents for their annual trade-show in October.

SoftBank Mobile White Plan Results

SoftBank Mobile has announced that the number of subscriptions for the companies “While Plan” has exceeded four million on May 3, 2007. Originally introduced in early January, this simple price package offers a monthly basic charge of ¥980 with free domestic voice calls between SoftBank Mobile users from 1:00 to 21:00, and for domestic voice calls other than those it charges a tariff of 21 yen/30 sec. In addition, text messaging between 3G users is, with some restrictions, free of charge.

DNP's Electric Wave Poster

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) has announced [in Japanese] the development of an information delivery terminal for mobile phones equipped with FeliCa. This so-called Electric Wave Poster system is composed of their ‘PetitPorta’ reader unit and a dedicated URL management server which is configured to deliver information related to the POP (point of purchasing advertisement) to RFID enabled handsets. The total number of accesses for each Petit-Porta location can be tracked and, if desired, a membership prompt is also possible in order to collect user information for loyalty programs or future marketing campaigns.

DoCoMo Flat-Rate Data Subs Top 10 Million

DoCoMo just announced that subscribers to their flat-rate data communication billing plans “pake-hodai” and “pake-hodai full” surpassed the 10 million mark on May 1, 2007. The pake-hodai plan, launched on June 1, 2004, allows 3G FOMA i-mode subscribers unlimited viewing of i-mode content for a flat monthly subscription fee of 4,095 yen (including tax). The pake-hodai full plan, introduced on March 1, 2007, enables subscribers with full-browser handsets to view not only i-mode sites but also browse PC websites for a flat monthly subscription fee of 5,985 yen (including tax). Neither plan applies to data surfing using connected devices, such as PCs, and cannot be used outside Japan.

DoCoMo Reports FYE 2006 Earnings

Market leader NTT DoCoMo has just released their accounting for the fiscal year ending 2006. Net income dropped to 457.3 billion yen ($3.8 billion) in the 12 months to 31 March, from 610.5 billion yen a year earlier, when earnings included a 102 billion gain from share sales of Hutchison 3G UK Holdings Ltd. and KPN Mobile. While sales climbed 0.5 percent to 4.79 trillion yen annual profit was down YoY by 25 percent based on increased handset subsidies and 3G network upgrade costs. DoCoMo also noted that ARPU in the fourth quarter fell to 6,530 yen from 6,720 yen a year earlier.