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2006: Japan's Year of the FeliCa eWallet Phone

2006: Japan's Year of the FeliCa eWallet PhoneAccording to the ancient Chinese calendar, 2006 is The Year of the Dog. More importantly, it’s shaping up to be The Year of the eWallet. Launched last summer, DoCoMo’s FeliCa-based wallet phones are a growing success and competitors Vodafone and KDDI have scrambled to launch their own FeliCa-equipped models.

A recent survey points to wide consumer satisfaction and even the BBC have started reporting on Osaifu Keitai (wallet phones). The BBC’s ‘Click Online’ producer caught up with me last month in Tokyo; they were in town to cover CEATEC, but also wanted the tech and business-model details on DoCoMo’s ‘i-mode FeliCa‘ mobile service, as well as how people are using them. The result was a pretty good TV programme (if I may say so myself), which you can watch on the Click Online site(WWJ subscribers log in for full story).

DoCoMo Subscribers Top 50 Million

NTT DoCoMo have just announced that subscribers to the companies mobile phone services exceeded 50 million today, about three years and 10 months after surpassing 40 million. DoCoMo subscribers refer to 2G mova, 3G FOMA and DoPa Single Service customers. In the first 10 years after DoCoMo began offering cellular services in 1979, subscribers grew at an average net rate of roughly 30,000 per year. From 1993, two years after DoCoMo launched its 2G mova service, the average annual net gain to the present time has been about four million subscribers.

NTT DoCoMo Unveils 3G Push-To-Talk Phones

NTT DoCoMo Unveils 3G Push-To-Talk PhonesNTT DoCoMo have just the new 902i-series of 3G FOMA handsets, featuring the new "PushTalk" walkie-talkie-style communication service. PushTalk will run over the 3G packet communication network and will allow phones to be used like walkie-talkies for simultaneous, one-way communication from one 902i user to as many as four other 902i users. The service will be launched in the near future concurrently with the 902i-series. DoCoMo said they are planning to waive communications charges (5.25 yen for each one-way call) through the end of December 2005.

The announcement confirms recent rumours (reported on WWJ) that the giant carrier would market a walkie-talkie-style service, already popular in the US, to defend falling market share and respond to flat-rate voice and data products offered by KDDI/au, Vodafone Japan and Willcom.

Mobile Intelligence Japan Wrap!

Mobile Intelligence Japan Wrap!On Friday, the MIJ team wrapped up the October mission to Tokyo and headed home to the Heartland for happy hour and some relaxed networking; everyone was pooped but delighted with the program (so said the team, not me the organiser!).

After a full day Wednesday at CEATEC to view fuel-cell mobile batteries, digital-TV handsets and a super new satellite pocket rocket from DoCoMo, we spent Thursday and Friday back on the MIJ agenda, meeting with, respectively, an LBS application developer, a major content aggregator, an alternative mobile payment provider (to find out what to do when your content is just too pricey for the official menus), a mobile marketing manager and a 3G carrier, among others. Thursday evening was another highlight as we met with Andrew Shuttleworth, one of Tokyo’s most knowledgeable and opinionated mobile application usability gurus, and a trio of young, female, non-tech Japanese college students who utterly tore apart preconceived notions of why Japanese use mobile like they do. (What? You mean you don’t like to pay for content??)

Listen to WWJ’s Lawrence Cosh-Ishii and Daniel Scuka begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting on Dave Graveline’s “Into Tomorrow” live at CEATEC; from 11:00-mark via MP3 Here.

Wireless Watch Japan Intelligence from CEATEC

Wireless Watch Japan Intelligence from CEATEC

The Mobile Intelligence Japan (MIJ) team spent Wednesday at the CEATEC show, checking out some of the most innovative mobile tech and services the Japanese ecosystem is currently developing. To start, Hitachi’s methanol fuel-cell handset for KDDI [ close-up image here ] was one of the major announcements made during this year’s event. Several Japanese electronics manufacturers, including Toshiba and Fujitsu, are working on a fuel-cell solution for powering and recharging cell phones and other portable devices; Fujitsu’s rather large (as big as a shoe?) version for DoCoMo provides up to 9 Watt-hours of juice.

There were also big line ups to view the new digital TV cell phones made by Sanyo, Panasonic and Sharp (for each of KDDI, DoCoMo and Vodafone) with plenty of people crowded around the NHK booth to test drive one of the units; all are due to launch by next spring and run for around 2 hours.

Later, we spotted Net2Com’s new IP-and-Skype handset available (since last week) for Livedoor mobile customers and were surprised to see a prototype streaming satellite handset from DoCoMo. The Mobaho! compatible phone — a full FOMA 3G device — will receive music and other programming direct from Mobile Broadcasting Corp.’s bird high above Tokyo and will launch next spring; the Mitsubishi-made device has about 2 hours of continuous playback time and appears intended to steal some of KDDI’s Chaku-Uta-Full thunder. Be sure to watch our latest video program featuring EZ Channel.

Finally, your WWJ crew had a chance to sit down and speak with Dave Graveline to record a radio interview covering some of the show’s highlights to be broadcast on 10 October.

Japan's Mobile Digital Terrestrial TV to Launch April 2006

Japan's Mobile Digital Terrestrial TV LaunchWe have signal. Mobile digital terrestrial TV broadcasting hits the wireless airwaves in Japan April 1st, 2006. Japanese telecom carriers and commercial broadcasters will be ready to start simulcasts of hybrid terrestrial digital programming and data feeds to cellular phones in just a few months. “Our handsets will be ready to comply with that date and we are targeting March/April 2006 release of mobile digital terrestrial TV phones,” NTT DoCoMo spokesperson Tomoko Tsuda told WWJ.

No April Fools prank, the start up date was announced by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Vodafone also confirmed to WWJ they should make the April deadline. “We are gearing up production to have handsets ready in time for the start of this new digital TV service,” says Vodafone spokesperson Matthew Nicholson. Details on when other broadcasters will start mobile programming and what contents they plan to spin to mobile should be available soon.