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Vodafone Japan's Final Media Briefing: Out with a Whimper

Vodafone Japan’s Final Media Briefing: Out with a WhimperFor Vodafone Japan, the end came not with a bang, but with a whimper. When we arrived at last Monday’s press event – the final one, it turned out, before news of the Japan sell-out hit the Web – the smell of pending doom hung in the air. Ironically, the media briefing bore an optimistic title: the “Future Direction of Product & Service Development.” It was also surprising to see that President Bill Morrow and Chairman Tsuda-san would attend for the 3G roadmap briefing to be given by former J-Phone super-star Ohta-san; WWJ has never seen three Vodafone Big Guys in one room together for a media briefing (perhaps there is safety in numbers)? But when the talk from all three turned out vague and totally avoided any mention of new MVNO’s signing up to resell Vodafone 3G capacity — widely considered to be one of Big Red’s few viable options in Japan — we suspected something was up.

And when we learned that a $49 bn write-off had been announced by London on the same day, it was obvious that the clock had already started ticking down for the carrier’s long-speculated Japan exit. Thus ended, after some five years of trying, what could have been one of the most brilliant tie-ups between a global brand name and world-leading Japanese mobile know-how.

NEC Announces Mobile Music for Telstra

NEC has announced the release of “music-on-the-move”, an innovative new mobile content service for Telstra i-mode users. To bring the site to life, licensing agreements have been secured with major record labels, EMI and Warner, as well as local Australian independent labels, Shock Records and Vicious, providing consumers with a diverse array of mobile content. Music of all genres from past and present is available for purchase and download in through the “music on the move” i-mode site, giving Australian mobile phone users instant access to their favourite tracks.

Sony Ericsson's Blazing Handsets

Sporting a 3.2-megapixel sensor, Sony Ericsson’s new K800i joins an exclusive club of high-res camera phones due out in Europe in 2006. Nearly identical to the K800i, the K790i will be a slightly less expensive alternative which omits 3G and video calling from the raft of available features, settling for tri-band GSM with EDGE for semi-high speed data. Making the leap from spinners and sliders to clamshell, the W300i is Sony Ericsson’s first clamshell Walkman phone, sharing the vast majority of its feature set with the spinner form factor W550i. A quad-band GSM handset with EDGE, the W300i includes the Walkman music player and comes bundled with a 256 MB card.

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San?

Will it be SanyoKia or Nokia-San? by Mobikyo KKLast week’s announcement of Nokia and Sanyo joining forces to boost their combined CDMA market share in the US was lost in the next-gen mobile TV hype and media avalanche (not to mention complaints about pokey dial-up access from the venue) coming from the 3GSM World Congress. The Nokia-Sanyo combination is an obvious play with both sides bringing a decent value proposition to the table; Nokia has massive manufacturing capacity, established distribution channels and a global brand while Sanyo has proven experience producing ultra-cool high-tech handsets and strong operator/vendor relationships. The companies gave no financial details of the tie-up, which is expected to close in the second quarter, but the JV will be based in Osaka and San Diego with an estimated 3,500 employees.

The challenge — and rewards — of morphing these respective ‘best of’ brands into a unified product offering are significant. Sanyo has advanced mobile battery and GPS chip expertise that even a Nokia would be hard-pressed to build on their own and such technologies are fast becoming key competitive differentiators as the US (and other markets) mandate emergency location reporting and other public safety services. Sanyo was vaulted to the ranks of top-tier suppliers to national champion DoCoMo last year as the name behind some of Big D’s first GPS-enabled models, the SA800i and SA700iS.

A Nokia-Sanyo tie-up makes sense from an economy of scale perspective and the end result should be better hardware for the end user, potentially at a lower price, which should please the operators and — more to the point — their shareholders.

Real Networks & DoCoMo Sign MOU

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and RealNetworks, announced today that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on February 15 as a first step to jointly deploying RealNetworks’ Mobile Streaming Server software to facilitate new video streaming capabilities that DoCoMo will add to its existing V-Live service(tm). The enhanced V-Live service would create an open environment to enable content providers (CPs) to use their own multi-format, cross-platform Helix Mobile servers, to stream video content over the Internet to FOMA handsets.

DoCoMo Announces Nokia 3G Phone

DoCoMo announced today they will start selling the 3G FOMA NM850iG handset, made by Nokia [ .jpg image ], which works on DoCoMo’s 3G FOMA network in Japan and W-CDMA, GSM and GPRS networks overseas where DoCoMo’s global roaming services are available, beginning February 24, 2006. Application to DoCoMo’s WORLD WING 3G roaming service is required to use the handset overseas for voice calls, i-mode, videophone and short messaging service (SMS).The handset connects wirelessly with Bluetooth devices, including PCs for data synchronization and connection to the Internet.