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NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records Japan

NTT DoCoMo Buys Into Tower Records JapanIn a deal that puts a new spin on mobile music promotion in the Japanese market, DoCoMo announced a partnership with Tower Records Japan opting to buy 42 percent of the music retailer for 12.8 billion yen ($109 million). Scheduled to go through by late November, the deal will make DoCoMo Tower’s single largest shareholder. The music retailer operates 78 Tower Records stores and 31 Wave music outlets. Tower’s motto in Japan is "The Best Place to Find Music" but will DoCoMo find it the best place to create musical revenue?

Taking the stage at a Tokyo press conference November 8th, Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s multimedia services department, and Hiroyuki Fushitani, president and chief executive officer of Tower Records Japan, gave the press few details on their upcoming fusion of telecom and music marketing. Not surprisingly, projects center around DoCoMo’s Osaifu Ketai (mobile wallet) platform for 3G handsets. Users will be able to wave their mobile phones over displays at Tower stores to download coupons or purchase CDs, picking them up at the sales counter on their way out. From this winter phones equipped with DoCoMo’s ToruCa (toru, capture; Ca, card) information-capture service will include Tower reader/writer units to download news on favorite artists, special offers from music labels, ticket reservations, and other music-related information. Tower’s popular redeemable purchase point system will also migrate onto mobile phones.

KDDI's New Trio of 3G handsets

KDDI's New Trio of 3G handsets Japan’s KDDI is promoting three new handsets coming out later this month that they believe mix fun with functionality for a package of business and entertainment features.

The W33SA from Sanyo, W32T by Toshiba and Kyocera’s A5515K each pack a push-to-talk style function. The trio of handsets comes equipped with Hello Messenger, a live audio-chat style service for up to five people that supports voice, image and text simultaneously. Twelve original cartoon-style avatars by well-known Japanese illustrator Kohei Yamashita will frolic on screen as stand-ins for chat members who can type or talk through the conversation over the handsets.

Targeted at young, female users, chat members register each other’s number in their handset to get started. Prices for the service of course vary depending on if subscribers have a flat rate package or not. If not then there is a charge incurred for sending photos or data. A special introductory rate for the audio portion of Hello Messenger until April, for example, will be 1.05 yen per 20 seconds. Scheduled to start service in late November.

KDDI Announces Digital TV, Group-Chat Phone

KDDI have just announced two new WIN 3G models: the W33SA (Sanyo) and the W32T (Toshiba). The Sanyo is, according to the company, the world’s first commercial phone to feature digital TV reception, via the carrier’s new ‘EZ Television’ digi TV service. Using the onboard GPS-powered EZ Navi Walk navigation system, a digital TV broadcast can automatically deliver instructions on how to find a specific location. The phones can also do "PTT-like" group chat and voice. Users can also search the title of any background music playing in a TV broadcast. Details after log-in.

Microsoft Scores First Windows Mobile Japan Deal

Microsoft Scores First Windows Mobile Japan DealWillcom, Microsoft and electronics maker Sharp are teaming up to deliver a corporate-targeted PDA WLAN handset for the Japanese market that will incorporate Windows Mobile 5.0 as its operating system. Scheduled for a December release, the W-Zero3 will operate over Willcom’s PHS (personal handyphone system) network.

Equipped for both voice and data, the handset makes full use of its Microsoft connection to juggle an assortment of PC-based functions over its handy slide-out QWERTY keyboard in addition to the standard mobile touch pad. Users can access PC-based email addresses, edit Microsoft and Excel documents on a bright, 3.7-inch VGA touch screen (the unit comes with a PDA-style stylus) and thumb through Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF files.

Toshiba 803 Handset with Oasis SD

Toshiba Mobile announced an agreement to bring exclusive live and pre-recorded content from Oasis to its music mobile phone, the Toshiba 803T. As part of this agreement Toshiba has been appointed exclusive mobile sponsor for Oasis live dates across major European territories up to Christmas 2005. The 803T handset [ .jpg image ], which will be launched in Europe in October, will be bundled with exclusive audio and video from Oasis on a 512-MB SD card. This content includes video for the new Oasis single “Let There Be Love” as well as five exclusive live audio and video tracks recorded at the Oasis homecoming concert at the City of Manchester Stadium in July 2005.

Mobile Intelligence Japan Wrap!

Mobile Intelligence Japan Wrap!On Friday, the MIJ team wrapped up the October mission to Tokyo and headed home to the Heartland for happy hour and some relaxed networking; everyone was pooped but delighted with the program (so said the team, not me the organiser!).

After a full day Wednesday at CEATEC to view fuel-cell mobile batteries, digital-TV handsets and a super new satellite pocket rocket from DoCoMo, we spent Thursday and Friday back on the MIJ agenda, meeting with, respectively, an LBS application developer, a major content aggregator, an alternative mobile payment provider (to find out what to do when your content is just too pricey for the official menus), a mobile marketing manager and a 3G carrier, among others. Thursday evening was another highlight as we met with Andrew Shuttleworth, one of Tokyo’s most knowledgeable and opinionated mobile application usability gurus, and a trio of young, female, non-tech Japanese college students who utterly tore apart preconceived notions of why Japanese use mobile like they do. (What? You mean you don’t like to pay for content??)

Listen to WWJ’s Lawrence Cosh-Ishii and Daniel Scuka begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting on Dave Graveline’s “Into Tomorrow” live at CEATEC; from 11:00-mark via MP3 Here.