DoCoMo just announced they will start selling the N901iC [.jpg image] 3G FOMA handset, the latest model in the 901i-series, nationwide on 28 January 2005. The 901i-series offers surround-type 3D sound for vivid ringing melodies and realistic audio effects when playing i-appli games or using other applications. The N901iC also has FeliCa smart-card technology for e-money, ticketing and other handy mobile functions.
Yesterday, WWJ formally welcomed long-time Tokyo tech journalist Gail Nakada as host of our MobaHo! video interview. Gail did a fantastic job in front of the camera and kept the stressed corporate marketing guy on the spot with charm, wit and a bunch of insightful questions proving this is one WWJ journo not to be messed with.. 🙂
To be accurate, Gail isn’t really a ‘New Entering Company Employee’ (Shinnuyshain); she’s been contributing very cool stories to WWJ since late last fall, including an in-depth look at DoCoMo’s new designer models and a report on the mobile Web’s first cell-phone soap opera. We look forward to seeing more stories and videos in 2005!
In the mobile space, Asia is a huge, innovate-or-die marketplace, and MobaHo! — a joint venture of 88 Japanese and Korean companies — is gambling Big Money that Asians will want satellite TV and radio broadcasts beamed from the sky direct to their handheld receivers, cell phones and car-mounted tuners — and maybe even iPods in the future. Today, we go eye-to-eye with Mobile Broadcasting Corp. for a first-on-the-Web videocast featuring facts, analysis and great eye-candy of MobaHo’s latest digi satellite terminals.
NTT DoCoMo plans to stop accepting new subscribers for its prepaid mobile phone services by the end of March as they are increasingly used in crimes, company officials said Tuesday. Prepaid cellphones under existing contracts can be used for the time being, but NTT DoCoMo plans to discontinue prepaid mobile phone services after a transitional period of two to three years. DoCoMo had 81,000 prepaid cellphone subscribers as of the end of last year, accounting for only 3 percent of overall prepaid phone users.
The market for electronic settlements via portable handsets such as mobile phones is likely to start growing in Japan in 2005, say brokerage houses. Nomura Research Institute Inc (NRI), a unit of Japan’s largest brokerage house Nomura Securities, said in a report that it estimates the market of mobile platforms—infrastructures that support electronic settlements and electronic certification through mobile phones—will double to 52.2 bn yen in 2005 from 29.8 bn in 2004, and will expand by eight times to 240.1 bn yen in 2009.
The December 2004 subscriber stats for Japan’s cellcos came out yesterday and the year-end numbers made two points quite clear: KDDI/au beat DoCoMo for the most net adds in 2004 and and Vodafone KK is still struggling. Looking a little deeper, we note that Big D’s mass-subscriber migration to 3G is starting to kick in with almost 1 million customers coming ‘up to speed’ in December alone; meanwhile Vodafone’s live! wireless Internet service actually saw a net decrease in users last month (by 700) while the two competitors added some 200,000 users to their i-mode and EZweb services.
