Obviously it’s been rather quiet on the mobile tech news front here this week. While WWJ could blame that on taking a little R&R at the beach, but the truth is we have been very hard at work to finish our Japan Mobile research report. However, we decided to put together a few quick tidbits that caught our eye this week, after the jump.
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
Tokyo-based Acrodea has made several recent announcements, in Japanese only, concerning the adoption of their Vivid product suite with handset makers across all three operators. The most significant of which would be the inclusive licensing agreement concluded with DoCoMo for their Vivid UI to be deployed on all models scheduled to be released going forward. The companies Panorama and 3D Message middleware is also now available on handsets from Sharp and Sanyo via SoftBank Mobile and KDDI respectively. See WWJ’s hands-on demo. video of the UI in action Here.
Qualcomm quietly opened MediaFLO-info.com on 1 August as part of the companies march to launch their mobile tv broadcast services in Japan. The Japanese only version includes overview materials, links to the FloForum and Mobile Media Planning Corp., which is wholly-owned by SoftBank, along with a sign-up form for their mail magazine. No official press release announcing the new site could be found, in English or Japanese, at the time of this posting.
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.. 😎
IDC released a report earlier this month which identified InnoPath as the strongest MDM (Mobile Device Management) vendor in its ability to gain market share and alignment with market opportunities. Of the top eleven MDM providers, InnoPath was favorably positioned with its ability to leverage market trends, its growth potential, as well as its ability to gain market share.
KDDI has announced it’s plan to offer a bundled e-mail service, available on both PC and mobile, powered by Googles Gmail platform. The free service, branded “AU One Mail”, is available only to the companies CDMA 1X WIN customers and will provide up to 2GB of storage when it debuts in late September. KDDI introduced the Google search feature for its EZWeb mobile web service in July ’06.
According to Bloomberg, KDDI announced their first-quarter profit rose 9 percent with net income climbing to 82.5 billion yen ($682 million), or 18,483 yen a share, in the three months ended June 30, from 75.6 billion yen, or 17,296 yen, a year earlier. Operating profit, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, climbed 16 percent to 140.9 billion yen.
SoftBank announced they have received a permit from the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications to run femtocell trials. The experiment, using 2GHz belt, will be conducted in partnership with ip.access, Motorola, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson Japan, Samsung, Sonas, Ubiquisys and NEC. Femtocell is a micro cellular phone base station that can be set it up in the home or office and offer mobile handsets voice services via existing fixed-line ADSL connections.
KDDI has announced that the company reached an agreement with Microsoft to jointly develop and provide applications using a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model for corporate users. The companies will also create an ecosystem to provide extensive support to independent software vendor (ISV) partners and spur the development of new service-enabled applications to drive momentum for new SaaS applications. The service will allow customers to access their data on a PC in the office or with a mobile phone when they are on the go.
