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Media Companies Take Wireless Route to Consumers

Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. already ply their wares in cinemas, on television and over the Internet. Now they’re reaching into the mobile phone in your pocket. Some phones can already display pictures and replay video clips, but as networks get faster, it will be possible to watch live newscasts or even a whole movie on wireless gadgets. “The opportunity would be based on an ability to provide a very targeted service to a very targeted customer base,” said Steve Wadsworth, president of Disney’s Internet Group. Disney’s Wadsworth said its wireless business is already profitable in markets where it is well established. Disney first started selling mobile content in 2000 via a partnership with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc.

DoCoMo's New CEO Meets the Press

DoCoMo's New CEO Meets the PressOn Monday, 21 June, NTT DoCoMo’s newly minted President & CEO Masao Nakamura held his first press conference in Tokyo. Previously, Nakamura was an official of NTT Corp. in charge of personnel management. He was appointed as a managing director of NTT DoCoMo in 1998, and became the company’s senior executive vice president in 2002. He also held other prominent positions, such as executive manager of the Accounts and Finance Department, senior executive manager of the Mobile Multimedia Division and managing director of the Marketing Division. WWJ subscribers can view the entire 30-minute Q&A session and please note — in the spirit of these changing times — we have upgraded our video codecs in the hope of delivering an even better product to WWJ subscribers. Wow, all the recent mobile kaizen must be contagious! Full Program Run-time 34:16, also available in Real Player and Quick-Time formats.

DoCoMo Releases Premini i-mode Phone

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries announced today the July 1 nationwide release of the premini, [image] the smallest i-mode handset ever released, weighing just 69g and measuring only 90mm (height), 40mm (width) and 19.8mm (thickness). Prior to the launch, premini handsets will be displayed at four shops in Tokyo and Osaka from June 26 to 30. Get a peek at this tiny unit in our our video coverage of the Tokyo Business Show.

Vodafone Rolling Out New V401D Handset

Vodafone KK announced today that from June 23 it will offer the V401D by Mitsubishi Electric [image] which features the industry’s first control pad that can be operated by finger tracing. According to the company, the V401D’s side touch pad makes it easy to operate functions like screen scrolling and camera zoom by finger tracing. The handset also comes with a jump touch feature that lets users record often-used functions via different tracing patterns so desired functions can be called up instantly, also the 2-megapixel Super CCD Honeycom camera is activated when the lens cover is opened, see footage of this phone in our Summer Handset Parade on Video here.

NTT DoCoMo's Nakamura: New and Luke Warm!

In a series of subtle and not so subtle remarks that made it clear all is not well at NTT DoCoMo, new president and CEO Masao Nakamura vowed to recover the company’s tarnished record of delivering huge profits. He also said the company would plunge into Asia for global revenue expansion, just like ex-CEO Keiji Tachikawa vowed to do in 2001. Beyond that, Nakamura promised that DoCoMo would put the customer first — but then said he’d put the shareholder first; later, apparently contradicting the propaganda put out by i-mode boss Takeshi Natsuno last week, he said he wasn’t sure how big the market for FeliCa was going to be. But there was plenty of new news broached by Nakamura and he’s set some hard targets in his (somewhat foggy) sights.

Mobile Digital TV: Not (Yet) to a 3G Celly

Today, Portable Reportable looks at the future of cell phone broadcasting and consider what will happen when cell phones will be able to received digital TV broadcasts. NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have quite different plans on how consumers will use digital TV. KDDI appears to be planning to allow the handset to receive digiTV and then use the phone’s 3G data connection as the viewer feedback, marketing, and sales channel — similar to how the FM Keitai works now with analog radio and the preinstalled BREW application.
Full program run-time: 5:01Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.