DoCoMo has announced a new flat-rate data plan designed for mobile PC users who connect to the DoCoMo network via a FOMA PC card, USB-linked DoCoMo phone or HSDPA-capable PC, assure that heavy or regular users of packet-data communications won’t have to worry about widely fluctuating monthly bills. Subscribers will be able to trial the service for 4,200yen/month on an unlimited basis between October 22, 2007 and January 31, 2008.
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.
ACCA Networks and DoCoMo have announced their basic agreement to partner in a joint venture, ACCA Wireless Co., Ltd., for the provision of broadband wireless services based on mobile WiMAX technology. The arrangement has been made necessary by the ministry’s decision not to grant 2.5GHz spectrum rights directly to existing operators of 3G mobile services, such as DoCoMo, in order to encourage new market entrants. The companies will prepare to apply for the 2.5GHz broadband wireless access license and develop business after the license acquisition.
DoCoMo held a well attended presser on Thursday afternoon unveiling two new smartphones, the F1100 from Fujitsu and HT1100 from HTC, both equipped with Windows Mobile 6. Full specs in English Here. The F1100 is targeted at business users and enables access via either HSDPA or WiFi networks touting a SIP client for IP telephony. The handset also has the companies signature fingerprint security scan control function. The HT1100 model supports GSM, GPRS and W-CDMA and features the dynamic TouchFLO interface, which appears almost identical to the iPhone UI. According to Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, it is the first 3G version of this handset which was introduced overseas in June. DoCoMo will begin marketing both models in early 2008.
Japan Radio Co. (JRC) announced the new WIPAS-26 series, a broadband wireless point-to-multipoint communication system operating at 26 GHz providing high-speed IP access at up to 80 Mbps, is ready for worldwide distribution. The system was co-developed with NTT in order to enable a wireless broadband solution designed to deliver connection speeds competative to an optical cable network.
Obviously it’s been rather quiet on the mobile tech news front here this week. While WWJ could blame that on taking a little R&R at the beach, but the truth is we have been very hard at work to finish our Japan Mobile research report. However, we decided to put together a few quick tidbits that caught our eye this week, after the jump.
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
The LiMo Foundation issued a statement [.PDF] to announce it has experienced a surge in membership as some of world’s most well-known mobile industry players have joined the Foundation during the past six months. Aplix, Celunite, LG Electronics, McAfee and Wind River have joined as Core members and will participate on the foundation board. Additionally, ARM, Broadcom, Ericsson, Innopath, KTF, MontaVista Software and NXP B.V. have joined as Associate members.
Tokyo-based Acrodea has made several recent announcements, in Japanese only, concerning the adoption of their Vivid product suite with handset makers across all three operators. The most significant of which would be the inclusive licensing agreement concluded with DoCoMo for their Vivid UI to be deployed on all models scheduled to be released going forward. The companies Panorama and 3D Message middleware is also now available on handsets from Sharp and Sanyo via SoftBank Mobile and KDDI respectively. See WWJ’s hands-on demo. video of the UI in action Here.
ACCESS has announced the addition of eight new members to the growing roster of companies supporting its ACCESS Linux Platform and NetFront browser technologies through the ACCESS Connect Ecosystem (ACE) global partner program. The addition of the eight new members brings the total number ACE partners to over 65. ACE partners work closely with ACCESS to expand the mobile Linux market and help fuel the growth of converged technologies and devices.
