felica
felica

felica

McDonalds Japan Rolls RFID Coupons

McDonalds Japan has announced the deployment of an e-wallet coupon and payment system, using Felica and DoComo iD readers, at 175 locations as of May 20th with the target of all 3,800 retail shops nationwide to be completed by 2009. While the company has been active in the mobile space since 2003, quoting 10 million registered users, this effort was touted as the first of it’s kind during a recent press conference held here in Tokyo. More details after the jump.

Disney Japan Prepares for Launch

Walt Disney Japan held a press conference in Tokyo to introduce their new “Disney Mobile” service which is slated for public launch on March 1st. Although the company will run the business as an MVNO, it emphasized that the service will be distributed in collaboration with SoftBank Mobile with the same “White Plan” price package offerings. There’s a nice Flash video on the home page Here.

FeliCa and MiFare Founders Unveil Moversa

NXP, founded by Philips, and Sony Corporation have announced the formation of Moversa, a joint venture to drive global adoption of contactless smart card applications in mobile phones using Near Field Communication (NFC). Moversa will plan, develop, produce and market a secure chip, a Universal Secure Access Module (U-SAM), that incorporates both MIFARE and FeliCa operating systems and applications. The U-SAM will also support other contactless operating systems and applications based on customer requirements. Moversa will be led by co-presidents Guus Frericks of NXP and Toshio Yoshihara of Sony.

Kyocera Enables WirelessWallet Trials

Kyocera announced the successful field-testing of handsets used in a WirelessWallet consumer trial by Cellular South. Equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, the handsets were used by consumers to make wireless payments and purchases in the nation’s first multi-city trial by a wireless service provider. According to Cellular South, WirelessWallet will become available to consumers in early 2008.

AU Design Project Announces InfoBar2

Based on the success of the original InfoBar model, the first handset from KDDI’s in-house design team which was released in October 2003, followed by the same candy bar styled Talby by Marc Newson a year later, the AU Design Project has just announced the long-awaited InfoBar2. Available on Oct.31st in four colors, this latest model touts a 2.6-wide inch QVGA organic EL display with a 1Seg digital tv tuner, FeliCa m-commerce and GPS functionality. The full specs (in Japanese) are available Here.

Japan Mobile Phone Sales for Q2 of 2007

Gartner is reporting that worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the second quarter of 2007 reached 270.9 million units, a 17.4 per cent increase from the same period last year. In Japan, sales to end users in the second quarter of 2007 were 12.1 million units, an increase of 10.3 per cent from the second quarter of 2006 but a decline of 17.5 percent from the first quarter of 2007.