Japan and the advancing markets saw the largest year-on-year growth among adults who used the Internet via a wireless connection. However, wireless population growth was largely driven by the two biggest Internet markets, the U.S. and Japan, fuelling 69 percent of user increase and adding an estimated 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users, respectively. Wireless Internet also gained some popularity in Western Europe, South Korea and Urban China.
Checking headlines around the Web yesterday and today, I was struck by the eerie silence on Tokyo’s mobile street. There is a ton of coverage on the Livedoor/Fuji TV take-over battle, but that’s largely a Web/media topic and not really related to mobile. Where’s all the silence coming from? And could it be related to Vodafone, Softbank or flat-rate mobile voice calling? To be sure, we’re not totally lacking mobile news; DoCoMo have posted a couple of releases in the past two weeks, including the 22 February announcement of Mobile FeliCa, see WWJ’s video coverage here and the 8 March notice on the launch of the N700i and P700i 3G FOMA handsets. Similarly, KDDI have some releases up (but only in Japanese; nothing in English since 8 February), notably on their new W31S music-player form-factor celly from Sony Ericsson.
Recently, East Japan Rail (JR East) and NTT DoCoMo held a press event in Tokyo to announce the January 2006 start of “Mobile Suica” which will allow i-mode phones to serve as train tickets. WWJ’s Gail Nakada filed her report here and today’s video program gives you a ring-side seat to learn how Big D and JR plan to win over the hearts, minds and wallets of millions of mobile-phone using commuters (and most of them are). As you’re watching today’s press conference, there are several key points to keep in mind. First, until now, it has in fact not been possible to use your phoneas a train ticket in Japan. Despite all the live demonstrations, trade show hypeand media speculation around FeliCa, the FeliCa-based Suica cards used by JR andthe FeliCa-based i-mode handsets sold by DoCoMo have been incompatible. Yes, you could use your FeliCa handsets to buy a ticket, but the phone itself was not the ticket.
ELLEgirl Magazine (published by Hachette Filipacchi) and Mobot today announced a 12-month partnership to create “mobotized” advertisements for ELLEgirl. Mobot’s visual search and recognition technology solution combined with camera phones makes it fun, rewarding and easy, for ELLEgirl readers to interact with their favorite consumer brands, providing instant gratification to teens living the mobile lifestyle. “This partnership works well for ELLEgirl’s teen readers that use mobile phones daily,” said Russ Gocht, CEO of Mobot. “For the advertiser, each picture can launch a thousand possibilities.”
Recognizing that spam e-mail is a serious problem that requires a concerted, industry-wide effort to resolve, Internet Initiative Japan Inc., KDDI Corporation, NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Panasonic Network Services, Inc., Plala Networks Inc., and Vodafone K.K. today announced that Japan’s major Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile telecommunication carriers have jointly established the Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG) to examine and implement technological countermeasures against E-mail abuse.
Vodafone KK said today the company would implement measures to prevent the display of disguised incoming call numbers. For calls that originate on other networks and terminate on Vodafone KK handsets, the company will identify calls suspected of stemming from disguised call number displays, and not display them to the receiver based on meeting predefined conditions. The system will start operation today and is due to be completed nationwide by 22 March.
