DoCoMo
DoCoMo

DoCoMo

Vodafone V603 Models Appeal to 2G Mobilers

WWJ’s director of digital media Lawrence Cosh-Ishii was on the platform at JR Ebisu station on Tokyo’s Yamanote circle line earlier today and spotted a new ad for Vodafone’s V603T (from Toshiba). The Toshiba model and its partner, the V603SH (Sharp), released in February, both feature much-improved analog TV and FM radio functionality and the Sharp model has a built in 3D motion sensor. The ad campaign and the new cellys highlight Vodafone’s continued development of cutting-edge 2G models.

Would You Store Cash on a Losable, Spamable, Stealable Celly?

It may look as though WWJ has been devoting too much editorial space to FeliCa coverage lately, but the fact is: FeliCa continues to be hot news. On Thursday last week, No. 3 carrier Vodafone announced they, too, had signed up to deploy Sony’s contactless payment technology on Big Red cellys, likely by fall this year. But I wonder if all Japanese consumers will be equally happy to store their hard-earned cash on a losable, spamable, stealable cell phone?

NTT DoCoMo to Stop Accepting PHS Applications

DoCoMo announced today that they will stop accepting new applications for PHS (Personal Handyphone System) mobile phone services as of April 30, 2005. As a result of the decision, DoCoMo will post an approximately 61 billion-yen impairment loss on a consolidated basis and an approximately 21 billion-yen special loss on a non-consolidated basis. Accordingly, DoCoMo has amended its consolidated and non-consolidated financial results forecasts for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005 (April 1, 2004 – March 31, 2005), which were announced on October 29, 2004.

Mobile Intelligence from CEATEC Japan

Panasonic CEATEC TourIn today’s program, we speak with Yutaka Nakamae from Panasonic’s Corporate External Relations Group who met with us during last fall’s CEATEC consumer electronics show in Tokyo. While there’s plenty of eye candy, including Panny’s 900iV (released in mid-2004), some skin-able models to please those who can’t decide on their favorite color and the very cool GSM X700 (now on sale in Europe), the real intelligence relates to finding our who’s boss in the carrier/manufacturer relationship (Hint: Who owns the customer?). Today’s proggy is not only a fun one — showing some great cellys from the October CEATEC show — but it also reconfirms the reality of the relationship between cell-phone makers and cellular operators in Japan — in this case, Panasonic and DoCoMo.

Big News from FeliCa and Vodafone Japan Trouble Follow-up

From the WWJ newsletter; This week’s news of lasting importance has to be Tuesday’s joint announcement from Sony, JR East and DoCoMo that DoCoMo’s “Mobile FeliCa” and JR East’s “Suica” epayment systems will be merged into a single “Mobile Suica” service. It hasn’t been easy for consumers to keep track of which device to use, where the cash was coming from (their on-card balance, their on-phone balance or other) and where the payment was going to. (For the full article, access the WWJ Newsletter archives here.)

JR East, NTT DoCoMo, Sony to launch Mobile Suica handsets

Mobile SuicaMass transit meets mobile technology for Tokyo commuters in a new service enabling NTT DoCoMo FeliCa-equipped i-mode cell phones to function as Suica JR train commuter cards. The new service will combine DoCoMo’s FeliCa smart card e-money platform with the Suica IC train commuter card (both using technology developed by Sony) into one mobile handset that can simultaneously pay for train tickets, commuter passes, airline and movie tickets and purchases at any of 14,000 — and counting — retailers.