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KDDI #1 Again for Subs; Where's W-CDMA?

With the latest Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA) figures in for January, the success of DoCoMo’s new 900i series looks like the best hope for the company to overturn four months of KDDI dominance in picking up subscribers. TCA figures for Jan. 31 2004 indicate that KDDI again proved overwhelmingly popular, with the company picking up 500,100 CDMA 2001x subscribers (against a loss of 268,100 CDMAOne subs) against FOMA’s 132,600 increase and Vodafone’s 11,100 W-CDMA subs.

Extracting 3G Profit Lessons from Japan

Extracting 3G Profit Lessons from Japan“The single biggest benefit that was discovered in Japan was that you need to be fair in sharing the revenues with the content developer. It is not fair to say to a Disney or a CNN, ‘Give me half your money, and then I will put you on my network.’ DoCoMo approached this with the rough idea they would like to keep 10% and give the content developer 90%,” says Tomi Ahonen, a long-time industry watcher, prolific mobinet author, and ex-Nokia consultant. He points to Japan’s stark contrast with Europe, where operators took a 50/50 or 60/40 approach. “Under these terms, [European operators are] very unlikely to attract a large community of developers.” He also has a pretty good ideas as to what EU and the US must do in 2004 to establish successful 3G services. Log on to hear these comments and much more in this lively interview.

How Europe Really Differs from Japan

WWJ co-founder Daniel Scuka reports from Germany

Earlier this month, I wrapped up a 7-city seminar tour, “Mobile Kaizen in Japan.” The one-day MKiJ seminars, co-produced with Mobile Economy, were an in-depth look at the success factors behind the wireless Internet in Japan. Here are some of my own findings..

Attendees included mid- and senior-level people from carriers, content providers, consulting firms, and mobile application houses, as well as several academics, some students, and one or two journalists. All in all, it was a fun, eye-opening experience, and – as best I can tell from verbal and mail feedback – was well enjoyed by our audience.

Tokyo Motor Show: Telematics To Go, Anyone?

Tokyo Motor Show: Telematics To Go, Anyone?Japan is the nation of early adopters for mobile, but there’s one consumer app. that went flat and is now undergoing heart massage by some of the country’s biggest and best companies: Telematics is the name, and subscribers is the game. 2004 is supposed to be the year when Japanese Telematics Ver.2 gets cranked into first gear and out of the highway rest area (it was also supposed to happen this year.. shuuush!) Japanese Telematics comes in three main flavors, and in this program you’ll get a taste of two of them. We managed to go for a ride on Toyota’s G-Book and learn more about their new sense of community offering. And we interviewed Nissan –which has great future plans you’ll get to virtually-virtually test drive– about City Browse. Full Program Run-time 21:58

Enfour Partners with Houghton Mifflin Company's American Heritage

Today Enfour Group rolled out a new language reference service featuring Houghton Mifflin Company’s AmericanHeritage(r) dictionary titles on Japanese mobile phone networks. This new mobile service – Comprehensive English Dictionary – takes the American Heritage(r) dictionaries into themobile content arena for the first time and services both Japanese and English speakers via official carrier menus.

Subscriptions to KDDI au Cellular Service Exceeds 15 Million

KDDI is pleased to announce that the au cellular service provided by KDDI and Okinawa Cellular Telephone exceeded 15 million subscribers as of Friday, August 15. In April 1999, the former IDO Corporation and former DDI Cellular group completed the deployment of a nationwide cdmaOne network, and started providing a seamless nationwide cellular service to customers.