Nokia
Nokia

Nokia

Extracting 3G Profit Lessons from Japan

Extracting 3G Profit Lessons from Japan“The single biggest benefit that was discovered in Japan was that you need to be fair in sharing the revenues with the content developer. It is not fair to say to a Disney or a CNN, ‘Give me half your money, and then I will put you on my network.’ DoCoMo approached this with the rough idea they would like to keep 10% and give the content developer 90%,” says Tomi Ahonen, a long-time industry watcher, prolific mobinet author, and ex-Nokia consultant. He points to Japan’s stark contrast with Europe, where operators took a 50/50 or 60/40 approach. “Under these terms, [European operators are] very unlikely to attract a large community of developers.” He also has a pretty good ideas as to what EU and the US must do in 2004 to establish successful 3G services. Log on to hear these comments and much more in this lively interview.

3G Mobile Forum 2004 Conference Coverage

The difference between walking the walk and talking the talk was painfully clear at last week’s 3G Mobile Forum 2004 conference held but a home run away from Tokyo Disneyland’s Magic Mountain. The four-day event hit the airwaves running with a keynote from NTT DoCoMo’s Keji Tachikawa, who was able to reconfirm DoCoMo’s solid plans for FOMA through the year. But given the surplus of inertia that’s dragging 3G launches– actual and putative– the conference swayed on the tides of optimism and not a little understated recrimination between carriers, contents providers, business platform providers and engineers about the potential if not the reality of 3G outside of Japan, Korea and (possibly?) the UK.

This viewpoint hoists the petard on our exclusive video interviews with mobile phone inventor and 4G actualist Martin Cooper, who tells us about the potential and pratfalls of the wireless world as he sees them 30 years after he made that first call. We also have Playboy.com’s Markus Grindel telling us about the potential for adult content in the wireless environment, and last but definitely not least a high-paced program with prolific author and analyst Tomi Ahonen, a man who single-handedly lends a new meaning to ubiquity; he seems to be just about everywhere in the wireless space, and boy, is he always switched on. We’ll have this terrific triptych of programs up in the coming weeks, but first, let’s take a look at some interesting points at last week’s conference.

Japan Wireless 2004 Preview

Japan Wireless 2004 PreviewTune in for a WWJ exclusive year-end interview with IDC Japan Communication Research Division’s Senior Analyst Michito (Mitch) Kimura. In this video program, Kimura, a veteran IDC analyst, casts his eyes on the ups and downs over the last year in the world of wireless and takes a look at prospects for 2004. He details the strategy at Japan’s three carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Vodafone, and offers his view on the prospects for Japan’s ever-surging content business. Kimura-san also gave us his perspective on the continued evolution of 3G, handset replacement cycles, and – a favorite topic of ours – Japan’s first packet pricing war.

Symbian to Lead Smartphone Boom

The mobile phone industry will sell 150 million smartphones in 2008, 15 times this year’s sales, with the Symbian OS leading the smartphone operating system market, according to a report published this week by ABI Research. The report projects strong growth for high-end mobile phones, with Microsoft’s market share trailing behind Symbian, and Linux bringing up the rear.

Fujitsu 3G Phones for EU in 2005

Fujitsu Ltd. is reported to be re-entering the European market with both 2- and 3G phones in 2005, according to a report in Japan’s Nikkei. Fujitsu’s last foreign foray overseas, in the United States, ended in 1997. The Nikkei reports that Fujitsu plans to develop dual-standard phones with France’s Sagem SA, with which Fujitsu signed a technology partnership agreement back in 2002. The new phones are reported to support both GRPS and W-CDMA.

2004 to be the Year of 3G in Japan

A quarter of all mobile-phone users in Japan are expected to switch to a 3G service by March 2005. Analysts say DoCoMo, Japan’s largest wireless carrier, could add a million customers a month in 2004, once improved phones are released. Meanwhile, DoCoMo’s rivals, KDDI and Vodafone KK, are also expanding, leading executives to predict that 2004 will be the year of 3G in Japan. “If 3G is validated here, a lot of carriers and suppliers will point to Japan as a success,” said Mark Berman, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo. “This could touch off a 3G rally” worldwide.