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NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records Japan

NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records JapanIn a deal that puts a new spin on mobile music promotion in the Japanese market, DoCoMo announced a partnership with Tower Records Japan opting to buy 42 percent of the music retailer for 12.8 billion yen ($109 million). Scheduled to go through by late November, the deal will make DoCoMo Tower’s single largest shareholder. The music retailer operates 78 Tower Records stores and 31 Wave music outlets. Tower’s motto in Japan is "The Best Place to Find Music" but will DoCoMo find it the best place to create musical revenue?

Taking the stage at a Tokyo press conference November 8th, Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s multimedia services department, and Hiroyuki Fushitani, president and chief executive officer of Tower Records Japan, gave the press few details on their upcoming fusion of telecom and music marketing. Not surprisingly, projects center around DoCoMo’s Osaifu Ketai (mobile wallet) platform for 3G handsets. Users will be able to wave their mobile phones over displays at Tower stores to download coupons or purchase CDs, picking them up at the sales counter on their way out. From this winter phones equipped with DoCoMo’s ToruCa (toru, capture; Ca, card) information-capture service will include Tower reader/writer units to download news on favorite artists, special offers from music labels, ticket reservations, and other music-related information. Tower’s popular redeemable purchase point system will also migrate onto mobile phones.

Softbank Trials Pressure DoCoMo

DoCoMo competitor BB Mobile, a SOFTBANK Group company, LG Electronics (LGE) and Nortel have demonstrated wireless "triple play" – the ability to deliver simultaneous broadband voice, video and data services – across multiple wireless broadband access technologies. The BB Mobile, LGE and Nortel tests were conducted across BB Mobile’s live trial HSDPA 3G cellular network and LGE and Nortel’s pre-WiMAX (802.16e) and WLAN networks in Japan’s Saitama prefecture, located northwest of Tokyo. The demonstration also included Nortel’s Multimedia Communication Server 5100, which delivers SIP-based multimedia and collaborative applications to end users.

NTT DoCoMo Pulls Out of KPN

NTT DoCoMo announced today it has transferred its interest in Dutch telecommunications company KPN Mobile N.V. (KPNM) to KPNM’s corporate parent, Koninklijke KPN N.V. (KPN), while continuing the licensing of its i-mode® technology to KPNM.

Please Remove that Email List

Yesterday’s Japan Times reported that a web site in Guam temporarily allowed access to a list of some 320,000 DoCoMo email addresses. NTT DoCoMo asked the offending company to take the list of the Net, which it did. How does a site operator in Guam (a US territory) get their grubby hands on several hundred thousand DoCoMo email addys? And why simply make them public (rather than reselling them)? And what’s happening with the list now? Some Monday mobile madness we thought you wouldn’t want to miss…

Results of Survey on Cellphone Usage

Online market researcher infoPLANT conducted research regarding mobile phone use among 16,833 phone users (operators limited to NTT DoCoMo, au, vodafone) from September 6 to 13, 2005. When asked how often they access Websites via mobile phones, 73.8% of the respondents answered “almost everyday”, followed by “a few days a week (10.9%)”, “four to five days a week (10.4%)”, and “about one day a week (3.1%)”. More than 70% men and women of every age group except men aged 50 or older and women aged 40 or older replied “almost everyday”.

DoCoMo's Nakamura Marathon Q&A

DoCoMo's Nakamura Marathon Q&AOn 29 September, NTT DoCoMo called a presser at the ultra-buttoned-down Otemachi Press Center and… there was no news! Instead, President and CEO Masao Nakamura faced tough questions from Kyodo, Nikkei, Bloomberg and tech media heavyweights on the latest subscriber and terminal numbers, new services and technologies, and how the carrier will respond to growing challenges such as new 3G licensees, mobile TV and number portability. Is Big D getting a little worried as 3G competition heats up?