DoCoMo
DoCoMo

DoCoMo

Mobile FeliCa and Suica Merge

President Nakamura, NTT DoCoMo Inc., President Otsuka, JR East, President Ando, SonyEast Japan Railway Company (JR East), NTT DoCoMo and Sony today announced they will offer a new service combining DoCoMo’s Mobile FeliCa smart-card handset with JR East’s Suica card starting in January 2006. The “Mobile Suica” service will enable FeliCa-enabled i-mode handsets to be used as Suica cards to board JR trains and make purchases in station shops and kiosks. With the news, two services that started as competitors for ecash settlement-on-the-go appear to have buried the yamakatana. Train-riding, phone-using consumers will have little excuse not to use FeliCa now. The companies said a test of the service will begin March 2005 using pilot i-mode FeliCa handsets.

NTT DoCoMo to Stop Accepting New Prepaid Mobile Phone Applications

DoCoMo announced today that the companies will stop accepting new applications for “Pre-Call®” prepaid mobile phones on March 31, 2005. From April, the company will suggest to users that they subscribe to alternative services, such as mobile phone rental services or “Limit Plus,” which enables users to limit monthly charges. DoCoMo launched the Pre-Call service in May 1999. The number of subscribers peaked at about 210,000 in March 2001, after which the number began decreasing. About 80,000 customers were using the service as of January 2005.

ACCESS NetFront Global Profile Selected for First Motorola i-Mode Handset Deploy

ACCESS announced that its NetFront i-mode Global Profile integrated software solution has been selected by Motorola for deployment in its E378i handset. This innovative handset will initially be offered by leading Spanish mobile operator Telefónica Móviles, with additional carrier deployments to follow.

DoCoMo to Exit PHS Business

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan’s largest mobile operator, plans to exit its money-losing personal handyphone system (PHS) business in two to three years and focus on its core mobile-phone service, the Nihon Keizai reported on Thursday. However, in an unusual move, DoCoMo’s International PR made the following comment about that report. The business daily said DoCoMo would stop accepting new customers for PHS as early as April.

DoCoMo Leaks Personal Data

NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday the phone numbers and other personal data of about 24,600 of its clients have been leaked. The mobile phone operator said it has launched in-house investigations because there is a high possibility that the data were leaked by insiders. The leaked information appears to be partial lists of customers in Niigata Prefecture and neighboring areas, with names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and phone numbers used for inquiries.

EZ Game Street: Watch Out, DoCoMo

EZ Game StreetKDDI rolls down EZ Street with an engaging new mobile gaming platform due to go live today. Designed for KDDI by Square Enix –- the gaming powerhouse behind the massively popular Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises — EZ Game Street invites gamers to stroll rather than scroll down a cellular landscape of 350 games from 43 of the world’s top game makers, including Capcom, Disney, Koei, Hudson and Namco.

Text-based searches give it up for interactive icons in the new BREW-powered platform created for KDDI/au CDMA 1X WIN 3G phones. Users click on the icons for more info plus a sample of the game’s theme song. Admittedly, there is some initial text-bar crawling: users first click on “games” in the KDDI WIN menu to reach Game Street. There, the menu is divided into six choices: title, genre, new games, producer, randomizer and recommended. Click on any line and a colorful screen pops up decorated with familiar characters from each game -– up to nine per screen. Pick a character and click through the payment/subscription screen to play. Options include one-time game play, monthly subscription plus game information sites, online communities and game software sales.