ACCESS has announced that its NetFront Browser and NetFront Messaging Client are featured in the new Sharp 3G handset that Vodafone unveiled on September 10. The 880SH supports both W-CDMA and GSM and is compatible with HSDPA. The handset, developed mainly for the European market, was recently introduced as part of Vodafone’s Christmas 2007 lineup.
The number of downloads from legal music and video services in Japan has fallen for the first time, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), Via PC World. A total of 111.6 million downloads were made during the second quarter of this year, down from 114.3 million in the first quarter of the year. The figures are derived from data supplied to the RIAJ by its 42 member companies. Despite an increase in ringback tones and a jump in cellular music downloads from 23.3 million tracks to 25.5 million tracks, the entire mobile Internet download market shrank 2 percent quarter-on-quarter to 104.8 million downloads, said the RIAJ.
SonyEricsson appointed Hideki Komiyama its new top executive as Miles Flint has decided to step down from the post. Flint, who became president in 2004 and guided the venture to profitability, will remain executive adviser to Komiyama until the end of the year. Komiyama, currently chairman of Sony Electronics, will move into the new job on Nov. 1.
KDDI will analyze the browsing activity of their “au one” customers from this autumn and introduce targeted advertisements that match the history preference of the individual. Mediba and and DAC (digital advertising consortium) will jointly develop this technique and according to this press release it’s introduction into mobility will be the first in Japan.
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
According to IFPI, the third single by an anonymous quartet of Japanese medical students has become the first full-track mobile download anywhere to sell a million copies. This digital music milestone belongs to Aiuta (“Love Song”) by GreeeeN, a new act signed to Universal Music Japan. The track was released on May 16 as a full-track download for mobile, and its popularity spread rapidly through web, radio, SNS and word-of-mouth exposure.
