Warner Music has partnered with Catalyst Mobile to roll-out Rhino Music Service as an official content offering on DoCoMo’s i-mode menu. The service will provide monthly subscribers – at 315jpy – with search, recommendation, preview, and downloading of individual assets. Other features also include ‘This Day in Rock History’ trivia and ‘Songs You Know Ring Tone Corner.’
DoCoMo just announced that it has signed a new basic agreement with Aquafairy regarding the companies joint R&D project for development of handset rechargers using Aquafairy’s hydrogen fuel cell technology. The agreement includes details of the development process and specifies the roles of each partner for the commercialization of the recharger.
Several more of Docomo’s latest 3G models, as announced in January, are rolling-out here this weekend. While the N703i by NEC was available last week, the Panasonic, Mitsubishi and waterproof! Fujitsu 703i’s hit the store shelves on Feb. 2nd. We have noticed an unusually aggressive amount of advertising – both outdoor and on TV – for these new models, so the TCA results in early March should be rather interesting.
NTT DoCoMo today announced their Q3 results (1 October – 31 December) for fiscal 2006 with year-ending March 31st 2007. Reported sales rose 0.4% with operating profit up 18% during the period, however net income fell to 93.9 bln JPY compared with 131.1 bln JPY in Q3 of fiscal 2005. The 28% year-on-year decline was caused by the one-time profit (40 bln JPY) booked from the operators sale of its stake in KPN Mobile in Q3 last year.
NEPRO JAPAN recently published the results of a survey into economising on one’s mobile phone bill. On one day in mid-December of last year they questioned 3,425 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 44% of the sample were male; 3% were teenagers, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty and over. Similar questions were asked of a similar group around the same time last year, so one can perhaps observe a trend over the past year. Full details with graphs Here.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that the company and UFIDA Software Co., Ltd., the leading Chinese supplier of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, will enter the corporate mobile solutions market in China through a joint investment in Fidatone Mobile Technology and Service Co., Ltd. DoCoMo will invest US$5 million (roughly 600 million yen) to acquire an approximately 33.3% equity stake in March 2007.
