Hong Kong-based Artificial Life, Inc., a provider of mobile 3G technology and applications, have just announced that its flagship and award-winning 3G product: V-Girl – "Your Virtual Girlfriend" – will launch with 3 in Hong Kong today. WWJ has been following the roll-out of Artificial Life products over the last few months and we expect to see them in Japan very soon as the company is in negotiations with the major carriers here.
In a deal that puts a new spin on mobile music promotion in the Japanese market, DoCoMo announced a partnership with Tower Records Japan opting to buy 42 percent of the music retailer for 12.8 billion yen ($109 million). Scheduled to go through by late November, the deal will make DoCoMo Tower’s single largest shareholder. The music retailer operates 78 Tower Records stores and 31 Wave music outlets. Tower’s motto in Japan is "The Best Place to Find Music" but will DoCoMo find it the best place to create musical revenue?
Taking the stage at a Tokyo press conference November 8th, Takeshi Natsuno, senior vice president and managing director of NTT DoCoMo’s multimedia services department, and Hiroyuki Fushitani, president and chief executive officer of Tower Records Japan, gave the press few details on their upcoming fusion of telecom and music marketing. Not surprisingly, projects center around DoCoMo’s Osaifu Ketai (mobile wallet) platform for 3G handsets. Users will be able to wave their mobile phones over displays at Tower stores to download coupons or purchase CDs, picking them up at the sales counter on their way out. From this winter phones equipped with DoCoMo’s ToruCa (toru, capture; Ca, card) information-capture service will include Tower reader/writer units to download news on favorite artists, special offers from music labels, ticket reservations, and other music-related information. Tower’s popular redeemable purchase point system will also migrate onto mobile phones.
Japan’s KDDI is promoting three new handsets coming out later this month that they believe mix fun with functionality for a package of business and entertainment features.
The W33SA from Sanyo, W32T by Toshiba and Kyocera’s A5515K each pack a push-to-talk style function. The trio of handsets comes equipped with Hello Messenger, a live audio-chat style service for up to five people that supports voice, image and text simultaneously. Twelve original cartoon-style avatars by well-known Japanese illustrator Kohei Yamashita will frolic on screen as stand-ins for chat members who can type or talk through the conversation over the handsets.
Targeted at young, female users, chat members register each other’s number in their handset to get started. Prices for the service of course vary depending on if subscribers have a flat rate package or not. If not then there is a charge incurred for sending photos or data. A special introductory rate for the audio portion of Hello Messenger until April, for example, will be 1.05 yen per 20 seconds. Scheduled to start service in late November.
DoCoMo competitor BB Mobile, a SOFTBANK Group company, LG Electronics (LGE) and Nortel have demonstrated wireless "triple play" – the ability to deliver simultaneous broadband voice, video and data services – across multiple wireless broadband access technologies. The BB Mobile, LGE and Nortel tests were conducted across BB Mobile’s live trial HSDPA 3G cellular network and LGE and Nortel’s pre-WiMAX (802.16e) and WLAN networks in Japan’s Saitama prefecture, located northwest of Tokyo. The demonstration also included Nortel’s Multimedia Communication Server 5100, which delivers SIP-based multimedia and collaborative applications to end users.
Toshiba Mobile announced an agreement to bring exclusive live and pre-recorded content from Oasis to its music mobile phone, the Toshiba 803T. As part of this agreement Toshiba has been appointed exclusive mobile sponsor for Oasis live dates across major European territories up to Christmas 2005. The 803T handset [ .jpg image ], which will be launched in Europe in October, will be bundled with exclusive audio and video from Oasis on a 512-MB SD card. This content includes video for the new Oasis single “Let There Be Love” as well as five exclusive live audio and video tracks recorded at the Oasis homecoming concert at the City of Manchester Stadium in July 2005.
Here’s a slick way for Philip Morris to tap into their customers, within the well-established pack a day distribution network, using mobile. Running from early September through the end of December, Marlboro cigarette packs will have a unique lotto number under the lid allowing registered members to win branded merchandise on the spot ranging from lighters and ball caps to larger weekly prize draws for jackets and mountain bikes. The grand prize trip to Italy for some hands-on F1 gear jamming!
Clearly an innovative approach to tap into, segment and reward the companies loyal base. While it’s not the first time they have run at ‘coupon code’ campaign, the QR driven approach – created by part of the same crew who earned a Golden Lion at Canne for Vidal Sassoon – this should definitely render more valuable meta data results than 1994. Watch the show&tell video [26mb – .mp4] to see the process in action.. 😎
