DoCoMo
DoCoMo

DoCoMo

Train 'em up early: kids' phones rock!

I was talking to my accountant last week; she’s a smart, self-employed mid-career professional with a husband and kids and she’s definitely one of the more practical-minded Europeans I know.

We were talking about ‘handys’ (keitai, in Germany), and I told her about the huge success the mobile Internet and 3G are having (still) in Japan, versus in Europe where no one’s making a single (Euro) cent on UMTS. Her reaction was typical, but interesting: “I’m not going to use the phone for sending mail or anything but talking. The keypad is far too tiny. It’s just not in the mindset of my generation.”

Flat-Rate Data Plan Saved 10,000 Euro

We noted an interesting post on a local mobile developer’s site, which points out out how much money their flat-rate data plan saved the company in January. According to the scanned statement of the DoCoMo bill; “By using the pakehoudai option [a JPY 3,900 service plan option for unlimited usage of i-mode data traffic] you saved 1.67 million JPY this month.” They calculated the data packets used total just over 1GB (that’s hardcore — Eds) which would have cost approx. 10,000 Euro under the regular per packet billing model. Yikes!

Buy a Burger with your Phone

McDonald’s Japan and NTT DoCoMo announced today that they have agreed to jointly promote e-marketing based on DoCoMo Osaifu-Keitai e-wallet services. The undertaking will include the establishment of a joint venture company to plan and manage e-marketing promotions to McDonald’s newly planned membership club, and the introduction of DoCoMo’s iD platform for mobile-phone credit cards and ToruCa information-capture service at McDonald’s stores.

Ketai Spring Fashion Parade

Celebrating the fast approaching arrival of spring in Japan we have noticed a significant increase in cellphone fashion action lately.. even Wired magazine is getting into the game! Samantha Thavasa has barbie-doll pink N903i designer handset due out in March and Omote Sando Hills held a glitzy fashion show over the weekend to feature Sony Ericcson’s new 703i-series model (yes that would be the smell-phone) complete with a custom TinkerBell design by Disney. JiJi Press video after the jump.

EZ News Flash Hits 1 Million Users

KDDI has announced the number of users for their EZ news flash service exceeded one million people
on Saturday, February 17 this year. EZ news flash launched on Thursday, September 21, 2006 as an
information delivery service, weather news for example with BCMCS to deliver instant and updating multicast information to the standby screen of subscribers mobile phone. The service charges a small information fee while data charge is free.

Most Popular Japanese Handsets in 2006

We caught a feature article on a domestic mobile news site that ranked Japan’s most popular selling models for last year. For KDDI/au the W41CA by Casio was put on the market in February and maintained top place for almost 33 weeks. The continued success of that model was attributed to the feature set which includes; EZ FeliCa (mobile wallet), FM radio tuner, PC Site Viewer (Opera browser) and 2.6-inch wide screen display. The second half sales were dominated by the W43S “Walkman Phone” by Sony Ericsson. See the full ranking list after the jump.