Beijing DG Telecom, a mobile applications and infrastructure provider, has announced an agreement with TruVideo, a Berkeley, California, based company specializing in mobile video solutions, to provide mobile video applications for the greater Chinese mobile market. Freeverse Partners, a Tokyo based company specializing in assisting foreign companies in Asian mobile business development and strategy, facilitated the partnership.
So far, Japanese carriers haven’t really pushed location services as stand-alone products; they’re sold as “part of” a handset and there are no handsets that are sold only as, or primarily for, navi-service capabilities. Sure, KDDI did do a big marketing push when their first GPS-enabled keitai hit the market in December 2001, but now it’s just one more feature onboard their fleet (in the January catalog, KDDI showed six of 11 handsets as having GPS capability). Also: Looks like Japan’s WLAN market – in addition to being highly fragmented – is one of the cheapest.
