KDDI have announced the introduction of their new Business Messenger service, which will enable users to send and receive voice calls, text, and still pictures to a group of up to 20 people at a time. Targeting the corporate/consumer market, the offering can initially only be used with Casio’s E03CA [ .jpg ] handset scheduled for release in December this year.
WWJ has spotted the first presence of NTT DoCoMo’s ‘DCMX’ mobile credit (card) service on the streets of Tokyo and, once again, the future has arrived. Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, WWJ’s director of digital media, en route to a central Tokyo video shoot a few days ago, spied the first street-level advert for retail goods payable via DCMX (image at right).
Predictably, the pitch came from Girl’s Walker, Xavel’s icon of community-centric, user-recommended mobile shopping, which earned the company Pharaonic riches long before dusty old ‘blogs’ were ever invented. Girl’s Walker is touting a special fall line of fashionable goods that can be paid for via “DoCoMo credit,” which takes the form of a real credit payment for adults, or the purchase cost is added to the monthly phone bill, for cash-flush, under-age teens. Note no reference to any sort of ‘card’ – the service is the phone, and credit ‘cards’ are oh-so-1970s.
DCMX is shaping up to be the main pillar in DoCoMo’s consumer financial services strategy that will lock in mobilers and secure massive revenues long after 3G – and the mere delivery of mobile digital content – has become a low-margin sideline that markets elsewhere still can’t comprehend. DCMX isn’t merely the the ‘Next Big Thing’ – it’s everything; and it’s going to make 3G itself redundant (WWJ subscribers log in for full viewpoint and details on the DCMX mobile credit service).
JR has announced they will drop the previous requirement to have the company’s “View” credit card in order to take advantage of their Mobile Suica service as of 21 October. They have also indicated that by sometime in December this year, SoftBank Mobile customers with FeliCa-enabled handsets (no model types announced) will also finally be able to use JR’s m-commerce system.
KDDI today launched the first strike in Japan’s mobile number portability wars with no less than 10 press releases announced today at Tokyo’s ultra buttoned-down Imperial Hotel. The line-up of phones and services includes new units from Casio (W43CA), Hitachi (W43H), Kyocera (W43K and W44K), Sanyo (W42SA, W43SA and A5522SA), Sharp (W41SH), Sony Ericsson (W43S) and Toshiba (W45T and W47T), plus a new in-house designer model (also by Toshiba) code named Drape.
The accompanying new data offerings unveiled today include a scrolling news service (ala i-channel) and mobile video conferencing, the first such service from KDDI (which, until now, has philosophically posited that video conferencing was not suited for mobile), as well as several improved mobile music and digital TV offerings.
CASIO Europe and Sierra Wireless have announced a marketing agreement that brings 3G wireless connectivity to CASIO mobile data collecting terminals in Europe. Under the terms of the agreement, the IT-3000, DT-X10, and new DT-X11 mobile data collecting terminals will support Sierra Wireless’s AirCard 850 wireless wide area network (WWAN) card for HSDPA UMTS networks. With the AirCard 850 card, CASIO’s mobile data collecting terminals can transfer data via UMTS, HSDPA, EDGE, GSM, and GPRS networks worldwide.
Two mobile phone models sold by KDDI Corp. automatically switch off after sending or receiving certain e-mail characters, the major phone carrier said Monday. The phones are the W42CA model made by Casio Computer Co. and the W42H model made by Hitachi Ltd., which were sold between late June and July. The basic software was developed jointly by Casio and Hitachi.
Japan’s Sanyo Electric Co. said Tuesday it will start repairing defective software in mobile phone handsets it now supplies for KDDI Corp.’s “au” phone service, resulting in an expense of Y1 billion this fiscal year. The Osaka-based electronics manufacturer said all 506,800 handsets of its “W32SA” model for the au service are subject to free repairs.
KDDI has just held a press conference in the New Otani hotel to introduce another seven new handset models for the summer season just as the most recent batch announced earlier this year are now hitting the streets here in Japan. The new hardware on tap includes a Walkman branded model from Sony Ericsson and Casio’s follow-up to last years popular G’zOne water-proof ‘tough phone’ offering. They have also announced another Hitachi handset with the felica mobile wallet chip, a super-slim Kyocera coming in at 18mm thick with a 2.4inch ASV liquid crystal screen (and analog tv tuner), a new Toshiba ‘mass music’ model with bluetooth and 1GB memory on-board plus an additional digital TV tuner enabled unit (with PC site viewer) coming from Sanyo.
This week marked a major milestone for WWJ! In one form or another, I’ve been writing this email newsletter for five years — and what a five year term it’s been!
I spent a couple hours last night looking over past WWJ newsletters, and was struck by how much Japan’s mobile scene has changed. In 2001, when I started writing a weekly mobile-focused newsletter for J@pan Inc, i-mode had just celebrated its second birthday, KDDI had yet to roll out CDMA 1X services and the No. 3 competitor in the market was known as “J-Phone.”
Today, DoCoMo is far in the lead with their 3G FOMA service and music and TV are the new hot trends; i-mode itself has become almost dasai (uncool). KDDI have created one of the mightiest and most unified mobile platforms on Earth, with GPS-based blogging, shopping and PC Internet integration drawing huge usage. The company formerly known as J-Phone is about to become the company formerly known as Vodafone as Masayoshi Son attacks 3G mobile with the same successful discount focus with which he attacked NTT and home broadband.
Bonus ‘those were the days’ tidbits via the WWJ Newsletter after the jump!
According to PhoneScoop the FCC finally approved the NX9200 cellphone, the U.S. version of Casio’s popular G’zOne. The handset, which takes both styling and engineering cues from Casio’s G-Shock watch line, sports a Verizon logo in FCC documents. WWJ covered the launch here in May 2005 and said at the time “This could be a design winner should it land on US shores in time for the Christmas shopping rush.” Looks more like “almost in time for spring-break in Florida” instead!
