The 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 September with an estimated 1,500 attendees; this year included a bonus side-trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, the following evening. WWJ was there once again, as founders of the MoMo Tokyo chapter, along with representatives from over 20 MoMo cities around the world. In addition to our Trip Report, WWJ’s ed-in-chief Daniel Scuka offers these thoughts about the experience.
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.
DoCoMo held a well attended presser on Thursday afternoon unveiling two new smartphones, the F1100 from Fujitsu and HT1100 from HTC, both equipped with Windows Mobile 6. Full specs in English Here. The F1100 is targeted at business users and enables access via either HSDPA or WiFi networks touting a SIP client for IP telephony. The handset also has the companies signature fingerprint security scan control function. The HT1100 model supports GSM, GPRS and W-CDMA and features the dynamic TouchFLO interface, which appears almost identical to the iPhone UI. According to Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, it is the first 3G version of this handset which was introduced overseas in June. DoCoMo will begin marketing both models in early 2008.
The genesis of today’s Viewpoint was back in March, when we spotted this op-ed referring to Japan mobile that had stated: “What’s different about the Japanese mobile market is that innovation is moving toward business models and marketing tactics instead of technical features and functions.” That op-ed piece in turn cited a new research report on eMarketer, “Japan: Marketing to a Mobile Society,” which insisted: “What stands out in the current Japanese experience is the fact that the center of gravity for getting through to Japanese mobile users has shifted in favor of business models and marketing tactics as opposed to new technical features and mobile phone functions.”
We took exception to both these as serious mis-analyses of the cornerstone role that technological innovation and network infrastructure competition have played – and continue to play – in powering Japan’s mobile success story. After contact with the eMarketer editors, we agreed to write separate opinion pieces, which we would both republish side-by-side in our newsletters, as an excellent way to hash out the topic and let you – our collective readers – decide.
Sadly, the marketing guys at eMarketer quashed the idea, as the subject and the detailed discussion would be “too technical a topic for our [eMarketer’s] newsletter.” But we know that WWJ readers are more than smart enough to figure out for themselves what’s really driving the mobile Internet in Japan! So we wished the eMarketer editors best of luck in the future, again gave thanks that WWJ doesn’t have any meddling marketing guys, and herewith present to you our Viewpoint.
(Subscribers login to access the full article by WWJ editor Daniel Scuka)
Image: Holographic projection demo at NTT DoCoMo R&D Labs, November 2006 ©Mobikyo
Capcom Interactive has announced the mobile version of StreetFighter II in celebration of the 20th anniversary since the popular arcade game was released. The download, targeted via US-based operators, runs $6.99 and looks very much like the real-deal. Modeled on the arcade classic the game, Street Fighter II allows the player to battle through more than eight different stages including several boss characters on their way to becoming the World Champion.
According to this press release by KDDI, EZ Gree passed the 1 Million members mark this month. Originally launched in November last year, and hitting 500k users in March, the social networking site plans to integrate more carrier led mobile data offerings, notably location based services, going forward. That will be interesting.. 😎
