Japan’s Toshiba will invest 200 billion to boost output of flash memory chips used for mobile phones and portable music players to meet soaring global demand, a report says.The Japanese electronics giant will lift production capacity at its domestic chip plant to 150,000 units per month in 2007, up sharply from the current capacity of 10,000 units, the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Sunday.
It’s not the first time that we’ve seen a major brand license a well-known icon to create a designer cell phone. Recently, Ferrari joined the bandwagon with a custom-tailored device by Sharp for Vodafone, available now in Europe and Japan. WWJ thinks many of the usual suspects (cars, sports, fashion, music) are likely to follow suit into the 2005 year-end gift-giving season as well. With music-enabled phones achieving white-hot popularity, perhaps we’ll see boutique handsets dedicated to ABBA, the Beach Boys or even Courtney Love (maybe not since Hilary Duff beat her to it), preloaded with all their ‘greatest hits’ and available just in time for Christmas.
But why stop there? Other global brands (even obscure ones) must be thinking ‘me too’ about now as well; Gucci and Playboy come to mind along with every major league sports team — and don’t forget block-buster movies (a real ‘Bat Phone’ would be very cool). So, what does any of this have to do with Japan you might ask? Plenty.
Ever had someone peek over your shoulder to see what’s on your cell-phone screen? Maybe you don’t want to share that latest hot stock tip or expose the lowest possible Tetris skill of all time. Then you’ve got to get a Magic Screen. When viewing the handset display directly, it’s clear and easy to read. However, when viewed at even a slight angle to either side — Abracadabra! — the Magic Screen’s holographic reflective technology blocks nosey parkers.
These simple LCD stickers have started to become pretty popular (think cell-phone straps 2.0) over the last six months or so here and all the usual suspects — from Disney to Kitty to Playboy — have licensed their famous brand characters. We noticed just yesterday that even Star Wars’ Darth Vader can be enlisted (for a paltry 900 yen) to protect all your sensitive info from those pesky subway peepers (the Yoda version — ‘Keep our data safe we must’ — was sold out). WWJ subscribers login for some full-resolution photos.
While Japan’s music market is second only to the US, with $3.5 bn in CD sales, it ranks first in mobile music in terms of market size, service penetration and sophistication. Japanese record labels have managed a powerful comeback from their failure in the wild, MIDI ring tone-based 2G music market to massive success in the master-rights-based "Chaku-uta" 3G universe. They already own a 20-percent share of Japan’s $1-billion-plus mobile music market. How did they pull off this stunning achievement? The labels identified their core assets in the mobile universe: trust and convenience.
Editor’s Note: Today’s guest Viewpoint is based on "Mobile Music Best Practices from Japan and Korea," a 103-page report recently released by Vectis International. WWJ subscribers login to read the article and receive a special 10% discount coupon!!
Researched and written over a period of several months by Simon Bureau, Managing Director and Editor, and Benjamin Joffe, Japan Market Analyst — two of the saviest mobile industry watchers in Asia — Vectis’ "Mobile Music Best Practices" provides 103 pages of sharp and critical analysis covering mobile music downloading as it has developed in the world’s top two wireless markets. With reference to carriers, content providers, networks, terminals, pricing, marketing and end-user behavior, "Mobile Music" is a must-read for anyone involved in planning and commercializing on-the-go music services anywhere.
Digging deep into Japan’s blog space over ice coffee this morning turned up interesting rumors (and some detailed specs) concerning DoCoMo’s next generation of 3G FOMA handsets. The dog days of summer is about the right time for an announcement from Big D’s Sanno Park Tower HQ on models slated for release sometime in Q3 and we’re willing to bet that these rumors may just have some substance behind them. While WWJ subscribers can log in for the full juice, we will say up front that more than one blog has mentioned 10 new models coming from all the usual suspects (NEC, Panasonic, Fujitsu, Sharp, etc.) plus a couple foreign-made entries for what should be called the 902i-series.
Vodafone K.K. just announced that, as part of its new 3G lineup, from early August 2005 it will offer the Vodafone 703SH handset by Sharp, the lightest model in its 3G lineup, and from mid-August it will market the Vodafone 903SH handset by Sharp, which features the Japan markets first (as of this announcement) 3.2 megapixel auto focus mobile camera with 2x optical zoom. To coincide with the sale of these new 3G handsets, they will also offer an expanded Chaku-Uta Full® full track music download content service starting mid-August.
