BREW
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BREW

IC Mobile Payment Reaches Mainstream

WWJ Portable Reportable MP3 audio report
Of the 10 mn Japanese using some form of the FeliCa contactless IC payment system as of 1 April, 700,000 are already mobile-enabled, according to Tokyo’s bitWallet, the joint-venture set up to commercialize Sony’s FeliCa technology. In today’s WWJ Portable Reportable, we speak with Norihiko Fujita, a bitWallet manager working on extending the FeliCa-based “Edy” payment service into mobile platforms. After NTT DoCoMo launched their own-branded “i-mode FeliCa” service last summer, Vodafone and KDDI are playing catch-up in 2005, and they’d better hurry: with 20,000 merchants already accepting FeliCa-based payments, there’s money to be made from mainstream users. (“Edy” stands, somewhat hopefully, for “Euro, Dollar, Yen”).

France Telecom & ACCESS Develop Rich Media Solutions

ACCESS announced it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with France Telecom for the joint development of a complete wireless Internet solution based on ACCESS’ products and services. This R&D partnership will enable both companies to collaboratively design and deploy innovative, rich media mobile Internet technologies for France Telecom mobile customers. The R&D department of France Télécom and ACCESS are committed to leveraging resources and sharing expertise to develop products based on the NetFront browser framework. The technologies that will be supported within the browser framework include SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), streaming video, SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), and other rich media and animation technologies.

Japan Exporting BREW Mobile Game Contents

Japan Exporting BREW Mobile Game ContentsKDDI will export BREW-based mobile game know-how to American telecoms hungry for advanced mobile content. Game producers Interactive Brains and Mobcast Inc. are KDDI’s first partners in this venture. Mobcast will initially supply two games: a quick-draw shooting game, ‘Hayauchi Gunman’ and ‘Photo Aquarium,’ which lets you decorate pictures on a mobile phone with a mobile aquarium. Interactive Brains will provide a high-speed 3-D racing game, Lightstream, available here on Vodafone and au. The content will be offered by the Japanese game makers with KDDI providing collection services and taking a cut of the action. The company also intends to localize game software itself for marketing and distribution on overseas networks. According to Interactive Brains, their game is scheduled for release in the US between late summer and autumn.

Massive Mobile Multi-Player Game Rollout Announced

Massive Mobile Multi-Player Game Rollout AnnouncedDoCoMo ruled 2004 with their 900i-series 3G phones and exclusive Final Fantasy VII spin off game ‘Before Crisis’ but spring 2005 belongs to KDDI. Japan’s leading 3G carrier has just whipped out a whole new posse of BREW-based mobile multiplayer games for their WIN CDMA 1X 3G handsets: Bandai’s Gundam (Kidousenshi Gundam 3D Meguri Ai Sora Hen); Bomberman 2 from Hudson; Armored Core; Ace Combat by Namco; Sega Rally; Street Fighter II and more. In February, KDDI launched EZ Game Street a new gaming platform powered by Square Enix; the user-friendly image-based interface and landscape of 350 games is set to become even more engaging with this boulevard of multiplayer options powered by new, fixed data rates.

KDDI Launches Mobile EZ-Book Portal

KDDI Launches au Mobile Ez-Book PortalOnline bookstores are nothing new but KDDI has wrapped up a mobile reading solution that transforms cell phones into personal book-mobiles. Starting 21 April, EZ Book Land for au WIN EV-DO cell phones brings bestsellers, business titles, movie novelizations, manga (comics) and anime right onto handsets — 7,000 titles from ten sites. Like the EZ Channel video program service, books auto-download to subscribers late at night (when network demand is low) to be read at leisure with no connection fees to worry about. Viewer software is provided by the XMDF e-book viewer developed by Sharp for regular titles and Celsys Comic Surfing software for manga/anime. EZ Book Land partner Maruzen’s bookstore chain anchors the portal in the real world for book orders of the three-dimensional kind via au Books.