i-mode
i-mode

i-mode

Tokyo's amazing week: UK/Jpn JV, 'SoftBank Mobile' and MNP

Watching the business of wireless in Japan just keeps getting better!

Last week brought a slew of new announcements, including news of the JPY11 bn SoftBank/Vodafone joint venture, confirmation that the company formerly known as Vodafone KK will henceforth be known as ‘SoftBank Mobile’ and details on the long-awaited MNP (mobile number portability) implementation. Subscribers can access WWJ’s insight on the first two in today’s Viewpoint (here), but read on below for our take on MNP — possibly the biggest revolution in Japan mobile since i-mode itself.

First, a little history.

Until now, the Big Three cellular carriers (DoCoMo, KDDI/au and Vodafone), as well as the smaller PHS carriers (Willcom, Astel, etc.), have run their networks as independent — and highly competitive — fiefdoms. There has been nothing like number portability or, for that matter, portability of any other service/feature. If you switched carriers, you lost your number…

Softbank/Vodafone Tie-up & Is the Best-of-Breed 905SH Good Enough?

905SH: Will Best of Breed be Enough?

The historic SoftBank / Vodafone press conference, held 18 May at Tokyo’s swanky Conrad Hilton, generated a flood of information and even more questions. Not much seems certain after Softbank’s Masayoshi Son and Vodafone’s Arun Sarin dropped the announcement of a never-before-tried plan for UK carrier Vodafone PLC to cooperate with Japanese Internet services company Softbank in a 50-50 joint venture aimed at developing mobile phones, services and content (mostly for Japan). On one level, the move is a straightforward play to enable Vodafone to keep at least some connection to Japan’s cutting-edge market and extract expertise, content, devices and business models (everything the old Vodafone KK was supposed to do). But looking deeper, the devil is readily apparent in the details: Who pays for what? To whom does value flow? Will VF be willing to implement strategy and devices from Japan via Son that they weren’t via their own wholly owned subsidiary? And what’s in it for Softbank — What could they possibly need from The Rest of the World?

As the humidity settles in for another long, torrid Tokyo summer, a ‘wait-and-see’ response is the most generous recommendation WWJ can make; however we can point to one bright spot: the new flagship handset, the 905SH. Available on 27 May, the phone is probably the best piece of mobile gear available on the Tokyo street this season. But will it be enough to stem the inevitable tide of subscribers from the company formerly known as Vodafone to Softbank competitors? Probably not. (Subscribers log in for more commentary on the rebranding, the new VF-Softbank joint venture and other Japan mobile highlights.)

DoCoMo Sees Finance as Key to Growth

NTT DoCoMo aims to expand in finance and other industries to offset slowing growth in mobile phone services. “If DoCoMo is a mobile phone company in five years, our growth will be limited,” said Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s vice president of multimedia services, said in an interview. “My expectation is to make DoCoMo a more diversified company.” Natsuno, who oversaw the debut of i-mode in 1999, last month introduced the DCMX credit card service that lets customers use handsets to pay for goods and services such as groceries and taxis. The company expects the service to generate as much as 100 billion yen ($912 million) in annual sales in three years.

DoCoMo Quadruple Play Includes Windows DRM, HSDPA, 7 New Credit-Card Phones

F902iSIn a rare quadruple play, DoCoMo today issued three new handset announcements plus one new technology tie-up press release. The first handset news includes the long-expected new credit-card-enabled phones that will come bundled with the carrier’s ‘DCMX’ Java-and-IC-chip-based credit card. The new 902iS series FOMA 3G handsets mark the latest step in DoCoMo’s transformation from Just Another Mobile Phone Company to full-featured financial services provider.

The carrier also said it had agreed with Microsoft to incorporate Windows Media technologies in DoCoMo’s F902iS 3G handset, to be released this summer. The first-time collaboration means that the F902iS will support both Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD). The carrier will also evaluate the incorporation of Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s version of SMPTE VC-1 technologies, in future handsets. The press release states that incorporating Windows Media technologies will enable NTT DoCoMo handsets to play music downloaded to a PC from more than 100 online music services around the world, and also support music content ripped from CDs in the highly efficient Windows Media Audio format (login for details).

IDC: i-mode has what it takes to succeed

IDC has released a research report (spotted on IT Wire) examining the consumer mobile segment that finds that DoCoMo’s i-mode platform has “the qualities needed to combat the accelerating downward spiral of ARPU for cellular services.” The research firm concluded that, as a mobile market matures and its subscriber base reaches saturation, mobile operators begin to feel the creep of stagnation and commoditisation, accelerating the downward spiral of ARPU. A new IDC study, titled “Follow The Yellow Brick Road: The Consumer, The Carrier, and The i-mode Platform” examines the roadmap of NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode platform and how emerging mobile non-voice applications have used it as a vehicle to enter the mobile market. While we wholeheartedly agree with the findings, the results in practice have been highly variable at best. Only Bouyges Telecom in France has had any real success with i-mode while several markets — including Italy, Germany and Israel — have seen abject failures. The devil is in the details and if you don’t execute well and account for structural differences in the market, i-mode may not be the goose that lays a golden egg… it might just be a goose.

Mobikyo KK Launches Wireless-Watch.com – Mobile Media Publisher Platform

Mobikyo K.K. today announces the public launch of the Wireless-Watch Community (W-W.Com), a dynamically updated website aggregating high-caliber news and commentary from mobile experts, industry watchers and publishers worldwide. The W-W.Com platform enables established and respected thought leaders to contribute their analysis and insight to a multi-market channel that is on track to become the Web’s most comprehensive resource of independent wireless related information.

Mobikyo K.K. Launches Wireless-Watch.com - Mobile Media Publishers Platform

W-W.Com launches with more than twenty registered community publishers representing a deep cross section of the most credible and insightful reporting on day-to-day developments in mobile and wireless technology, business models, strategies, applications, terminals, convergence and Internet. “The concept is to gather talented regional mobile media publishers into a single portal to raise the online exposure for all, creating a custom, up-to-date news feed and offering dedicated content that will become a daily destination for the industry worldwide,” said Daniel Scuka, chief editor for Mobikyo’s Wireless Watch Japan media site.

All content coming into the system is retained with full click-through to the original source location and the process is entirely automated with no editorial filtering or control. “Following the famous i-mode model, we have built a critical-mass content platform with a generous revenue-share structure that provides a valuable opportunity for publishers and generates a unique offering for our site visitors,” said Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, representative director for Mobikyo.