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3 in 4 Japanese Mobiles Currently Spam-Free

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the subject of mobile phones and spam. Over three days at the start of February 330 peope from their monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was 51.8% feamle, with 26.7% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, 5.5% in their fifties, and 2.1% in their sixties. I’ve been spam-free on my phone, perhaps because I only sign up with reputable firms. However, my wife has used YNot electronic greeting cards just recently, and has been plagued with a flood of spam from Rakuten partners. Full details with graphs Here.

20% of Japanese Parents Give Children Mobile

japan.internet.com recently reported on a survey conducted at the start of the month by Cross Marketing Inc regarding children and mobile phones. 300 members of their monitor panel who had children successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sample was split 50:50 male and female, and the ages of their children (some of the respondents had more than one) were 11.0% under three years old, 41.7% older than three but not yet entered elementary school, 30.0% in the first two years of elementary school (aged six or seven), 19.7% in the third or fourth year of elementary school, 28.0% in the fifth and sixth year of elementary school, 31.0% in middle school, and 20.7% in high school or older. Full details with graphs Here.

January Carrier Stats Released

The latest subscriber figures were announced today with good news for SoftBank Mobile and what must be disappointing results for DoCoMo while KDDI continues to lead the pack in over-all performance again in January. We had mentioned that many industry watchers were expecting SoftBanks new flat-rate voice plan – announced in early January – would have an positive impact, and it certainly did. Most surprising was the small month-on-month loss of i-mode customers, the second time in 3 months, for the incumbent.

Cutting Back on Mobile Phone Bills in 2007

NEPRO JAPAN recently published the results of a survey into economising on one’s mobile phone bill. On one day in mid-December of last year they questioned 3,425 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 44% of the sample were male; 3% were teenagers, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty and over. Similar questions were asked of a similar group around the same time last year, so one can perhaps observe a trend over the past year. Full details with graphs Here.

OKI Unveils Base Advanced Band LSI

Oki Electric has announced their ML7257 [.jpg here] base band LSI which incorporates voice and data communication functions in a single chip. OKI succeeded in including the three types of modulation and demodulation functions defined by W-OAM, as well as all the voice compression functions in a single device. Thus, power consumption is reduced to two-thirds that of conventional DSP-based software solutions. For the CPU core, the LSI uses ARM7TDMI, which is used in many mobile phones and PDAs around the world because of its high-performance, low power consumption and high-code efficiency.

Japan Spectrum Draft Report

Frequency issues may be a gating factor in Japan, where WiMAX penetration depends on how the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) regulates the usage of the 2.5GHz band. In December 2005, the group offered recommendations for spectrum usage from 800MHz to 81GHz. The MIC study group chose the 2.5GHz band specifically for low-cost broadband mobile wireless services not provided by current mobile-phone networks. An advisory telecommunication council will issue a draft report in September, with a final report due in November.