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Global Lessons from Mobile Computing in Japan

Global Lessons from Mobile Computing in JapanWe recently spent a fascinating hour with James Gosling, godfather of Java and an eloquent supporter of open standards and common sense when it comes to mobile application development. James points out that NTT DoCoMo has let anyone drop software into the network and get paid. But North American carriers don’t appear to have taken the hint. “[They] have this attitude that their networks need to be closed. Personally, I don’t buy it. They’re being very, very short-sighted.” Mobile business developers and service planners everywhere: Don’t miss this one.

Fall Roundup of Hot Topics: Packet Fees, WLAN, and 3G Roaming

A couple of interesting events took place in Tokyo last Friday. The American Chamber of Commerce hosted their Fourth Annual E-Business Summit, while Credit Suisse First Boston’s lead telecoms analyst Mark Berman conducted a 3G/Wireless Internet Conference. Some interesting points came out of both. Afterwards, Kobe University’s Jeff Funk commented that the predicted fall in 3G packet prices is “interesting,” while Matsumoto’s additional arguments — that the US is a car society and thus Japan’s experience isn’t relevant — was not valid since “SMS is doing well in Europe and DoCoMo claim that i-mode revenues per person are independent of the region in Japan.”

Feeding Content to Keitais

Feeding Content to KeitaisWe spent a day at Sun Microsystem’s JavaOne conference and show in Yokohama in September, and were pleasantly surprised to meet up with mobile software vendor Openwave, grand-daddy of the WAP Forum (freshly repainted as the Open Mobile Alliance). Japanese carriers have created killer Java services… and they had to do so from scratch. That included the provisioning system which actually feeds the applis onto the handsets (providers merely have to write the downloadable Java code). Now another major player has launched a Java provisioning system (which also works for other content). Want to launch Java, but you’re not partnered with DoCoMo? You’d better watch this one twice…

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.

Mobile Madness at the Fall Tokyo Game Show

Mobile Madness at the Fall Tokyo Game ShowBy platform, mobile games (mostly Java, as far as we could see) represented 9.2 percent of the 393 new titles announced at the TGS, a significant if yet modest chunk of the overall game market. This was up steeply from 4.1 percent of 339 titles at the fall 2001 show, but still not equal to the 11.0, 14.7, and 17.1 percent shares seen at the spring 2001 (309 new titles), fall 2000 (334 new titles), and spring 2000 (380 new titles) shows, respectively. We have lots of Java screen savers,” said Taito Corporation at the DoCoMo booth; Seoul-based game maker GameVIL comes ashore to leverage made-in-Korea BREW expertise (KTF’s BREW allows 200KB downloads — the standard for KDDI to beat?); and advice on creating successful Java services from PCCW: “Prepare a good environment for the developers.” Daniel had a splitting headache, but this program rocks!

Hello Kitty's Revenge

Early this year, there was some comment in the open press concluding that the US was the world’s leading source of wireless innovation and technology expertise (“Europe Had Decisive Wireless Lead, But Lost It to US With Poor Moves”). Well, the good news is that finding some of those smaller, innovative creators of made-right-here-in-Japan, ready-to-be-exported mobile technology is getting an awful lot easier. We spent yesterday at Sun’s JavaOne conference in Yokohama, and there was an interesting line-up of companies displaying their wares on the showroom floor.