kddi
kddi

kddi

Some of Japan's Cool New Apps

In a telephone interview with a research company in Toronto last night, I was asked for examples of the coolest new applications or services in Japan. Without a doubt, I answered, mobile music and the Chaku Uta Full song download services are really eating up packet bandwidth. The week before last, KDDI announced that the cumulative downloads for EZ Chaku Uta Full (provided via the CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN network) had surpassed 3 million as of 1 March 2005, less than four months after the 19 November 2004 launch. The company added that the 1 million and 2 million milestones were achieved on 5 January and 5 February, respectively.

From the WWJ Newsletter. Log in to read full article. To receive WWJ’s free email newsletter, subscribe here.

Sweet New Sanyo 3G Phone

KDDI has just announced a new addition to their line-up of 3G handsets made by Sanyo [.jpg image] to go on sale starting tomorrow in the Kanto region. Aside from glowing candy colors like “Pink Mousse” and “Mango Pudding” — sure to please the young, hip, teen crowd — it also has a unique GPS function so the parents will know where the kids are located when they send email. The ultra-high-density QVGA display combined with ‘Smart-Mode’ and ‘friendly design’ also has BREW, QR code reading and Navi-Walk functions onboard, making it a certain smash hit with the ‘tween crowd this spring.

Mobile Flat-Rate Voice Planned

Willcom Inc., Japan’s largest personal handy-phone system (PHS) company, said Tuesday it will introduce a flat rate for voice communication starting 1 May, becoming the first domestic wireless carrier to provide such service. It said the service will allow users to call fellow Willcom PHS users for unlimited minutes for 2,900 yen per month. Willcom, formerly DDI Pocket Inc., was bought out from KDDI Corp. by the U.S. investment firm Carlyle Group.

It's Quiet on Tokyo's Mobile Street. Too Quiet.

Checking headlines around the Web yesterday and today, I was struck by the eerie silence on Tokyo’s mobile street. There is a ton of coverage on the Livedoor/Fuji TV take-over battle, but that’s largely a Web/media topic and not really related to mobile. Where’s all the silence coming from? And could it be related to Vodafone, Softbank or flat-rate mobile voice calling? To be sure, we’re not totally lacking mobile news; DoCoMo have posted a couple of releases in the past two weeks, including the 22 February announcement of Mobile FeliCa, see WWJ’s video coverage here and the 8 March notice on the launch of the N700i and P700i 3G FOMA handsets. Similarly, KDDI have some releases up (but only in Japanese; nothing in English since 8 February), notably on their new W31S music-player form-factor celly from Sony Ericsson.

KDDI's EZ Channel TV

KDDI have just announced that as of 7 April they will have a total of 36 channels available on the WIN platform’s “EZ Channel” video content service. New additions include pro baseball, language lessons and an extreme sports program, X Games, from Walt Disney Japan. Customers can start signing up next week to see introduction program previews and, we guess, finally buy into a flat-rate packet data plan (if they haven’t already).

Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group

Recognizing that spam e-mail is a serious problem that requires a concerted, industry-wide effort to resolve, Internet Initiative Japan Inc., KDDI Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Panasonic Network Services, Inc., Plala Networks Inc., and Vodafone K.K. today announced that Japan’s major Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile telecommunication carriers have jointly established the Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG) to examine and implement technological countermeasures against E-mail abuse.