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FOMA

After J-Phone's Miserable Summer Vodafone KK is Born

With former J-Phone’s 3G rollout stalled and, it seems, little left in the goodies barrel to counter DoCoMo’s sleek summer-six 2G 505i rollout, and swelling 3G subscriber figures from both its rivals here in Japan, J-Phone needed to distract press attention from the company’s terrible summer. Last week, Darryl E. Green just did that. There was a strong sense of DeJaVu at WWJ when Green, eschewing fowl or game, pulled the NEC ‘tellycelly’ out of his corporate top hat at October 1’s inaugural Vodafone KK press conference. Remember Sha-mail? How fleet-footed J-Phone sidestepped DoCoMo and stole the hearts, or at least the images, of 10 million teenagers with cool keitai camera phones? It looks like the rebranded J-Phone-cum-Vodafone KK combo is going to leapfrog DoCoMo and KDDI again with Japan’s first TV-Phone this December. And, beyond that, Vodafone KK has a lot more up its wide sleeves with six new 3G phones, new business billing plans and bargain rates to fight back.

WPC Expo: FOMA, Telematics and Wristomo

WPC Expo: FOMA, Telematics and WristomoWireless Watch Japan was on hand for FOMA’s first international video call in Sept. at the WPC 2003 event. After the keynote introduction from Hutchison’s CEO Bob Fuller, and the World Call demo., we chatted with DoCoMo’s Mariko Hanaoka about their new service. We also took a ride on the upcoming telematics platform in a quick interview with Hidenori Obara of DoCoMo’s ITS Business Promotion Office, and heard that Seiko will add a color display, but not a camera function, to its next generation of the Wristomo PHS phone. Perhaps someday DoCoMo will bundle all three services together…!! In a seperate development we got a peek at Panasonic’s killer app. for camera phones everywhere. Full Program Run-time 16:22

Tokyo Game Show 2003: Mobile Gaming BREW's Up

By December HelloNet Co. Ltd. of Busan, Korea, will launch a Massive Multi-Player (interactive) BREW based game in Japan making use of KDDI’s CDMA 1X speed, Chief Executive Officer Lee Hwan Joon told WWJ at last week’s Tokyo Game Show. He also put us straight on a few pertinent questions floating around the event. Namely: Is BREW difficult to write? Will MMPGs be too expensive for users? There just won’t be a market for such apps, right? The answer we got from Lee was NO-NO and thrice NO. With a grin and a game that supports 8,000 players acting out on his phone, he was of the opinion that BREW’s a better way to go for the next generation of interactive, keitai-based games. Lee was the most upbeat developer we met at TGS, which itself was an upbeat show. With the mobile games industry set to explode, the evidence is that new JAVA games continue to rock and developers need to be brave if they are to take advantage of 3G’s potential. Oh, and by the way, in our upcoming video program you’ll be some of the first to see Final Fantasy played on a ‘coming soon’ FOMA handset.

WPC Expo 2003: 1st FOMA Intl. Video Call – DoCoMo Finally in the Drivers Seat?

WWJ was busy shooting video at Makahari Messe in Chiba last week, think telematics, wristphones and international FOMA videoconferencing. But enough teasing: The news we didn’t see elsewhere about the show was that DoCoMo, is – finally – taking telematics seriously, as we found in a quick interview with Hidenori Obara of DoCoMo’s ITS Business Promotion Office. Obara admitted that DoCoMo is “behind” KDDI, with the latter pushing all sorts of mobile-WLAN technologies to potentially hook into a slab of Japan’s 12.3 million in-auto car navigation (car nabi) systems. In a separate development, we heard that Seiko is adding a color screen, but not a camera function, on its Wristomo PHS phone. Unsurprisingly, they are not planning to mount a CCD chip because it’ll make the wearers’ wrist limp from the extra weight, and the extra battery power needed might be another issue. Tune in next week and see it all for yourself when we show FOMA’s first international video call, chat with DoCoMo’s Mariko Hanaoka, and get a peek at Panasonic’s next killer app. for camera phones everywhere!!

DoCoMo Develops 3G Micro Base Stations

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today the development of micro base stations for the 3G network that are up to 1/30th the size of conventional base stations. The service area of the FOMA service has expanded steadily, which will reach 96% of the population nationwide by the end of September. The micro base stations will allow DoCoMo to expand FOMA service more economically and with greater flexibility for adaptation to operational environments.