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music

End of an Era: Reflections on Ringtones

It seems like only yesterday that polyphonic ringtones were all the rage in Japan, with mobile content companies frantically hustling to create MIDI-like files for all the popular songs in first 4-voice polyphony in 2000, followed by 16-poly in 2001 and 40-poly in 2002. Although many in the mobile industry thought the ringtone market here had peaked by that time, it somehow managed to keep growing for another three years. In fact, it has really only been in the past seven months or so that we’re finally seeing the major shakeout here that was expected several years ago.

Bandai Adds Cameraphone Music Search

Bandai Networks has announced a new mobile phone service that allows cameraphone users to take a photo of a CD cover or poster and search for the information about that artist or band. Users can then click the link in the returned content to easily access a mobile site containing detailed product info. and (hopefully) purchase related products directly from their phone. Those sneaky capitalists!

Survey: Handset Upgrade Features

Nepro Japan recently conducted this survey focused on Japanese cell phone users new handset upgrade feature priorities. The questionnaire returned 3,817 valid responses and indicated demographics show 56% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 35% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, and 19% aged forty or older. Some rather interesting results after the jump.

I Want My 3G MTV

Viacom Japan will re-launch their mobile music channel as a social networking service, myMTV, which will offer members their own profile pages along video uploading and sharing functions. The service is ad-supported and free to consumers and will be available on all three of Japan’s mobile operators when it rolls-out in September. According to comments from executives on-hand at the Tokyo press conference, this effort will serve as a model for future deployment in other markets.

Media Groove Unveils Chipuya Town

According to Infinita, Media Groove Inc. will beta launch a new mobile SNS service on September 15. Chipuya Town is a Flash-based 2D version of real-world Tokyo youth hotspot Shibuya that users will be able to navigate around and interact in with avatars. The offering also features a virtual currency system which can be redeemed for avatar clothing as well as interior goods for avatar rooms, and according to the press release for mobile content such as full track music downloads, too.

Failure to execute doesn't mean i-mode is dead (yet)

After last week’s O2 and Telstra i-mode cancellation news came out, it took hardly any time at all for the obfuscation and mis-analyses to hit the Web.

Failure to execute doesn't mean that i-mode is dead (yet)

The news, in case you missed it, confirmed that Australia’s Telstra would, and the UK’s O2 most likely would, end their i-mode services; Telstra will terminate i-mode support at the end of this year, while O2 will stop selling new handsets this month and phase the service out over the next two years.

O2 UK was reported to have 260,000 active users, a dozen i-mode-compatible handsets and some 150 sites; O2 Ireland has not stated their subscriber numbers, but the Times said total O2 subscribers were 546,000, implying that Ireland had 286,000 i-moders. Telstra reportedly has fewer than 60,000 subscribers. WWJ members login for the full skinny.