Vodafone
Vodafone

Vodafone

KDDI Introduces Seven New 3G Handsets

This week was a new-cell-phone-announcement triple-play! Following DoCoMo on Tuesday and Vodafone yesterday, KDDI’s au brand held a press conference this afteroon at the super-swank New Otani hotel to unveil an impressive spring line-up. From L. to R. (below): Toshiba’s W41T with Japan’s first built-in 4GB HDD, the slick-styled Neon, is the latest addition to the in-house Design Project; Hitachi’s W41H ‘One-Seg’ digital TV phone; Casio’s W41CA, featuring a FeliCa mobile wallet; Kyocera’s W41K is a ‘Full Function’ camera phone with a 3.2-megapixel cam; SonyEricsson’s W41S is also FeliCa IC-enabled; and finally the Sanyo W41SA, which has an interesting handwritten character scanning application. The new fleet will hit store shelves starting in February along with the introduction of an enhanced Listen Mobile Service.

KDDI Introduces Seven New 3G Handsets by Mobikyo KK

First Korean 3G Phone, New 3G Services for Vodafone KK

First Korean 3G Phone, New 3G Services for Vodafone KKAt a Tokyo press conference today, Vodafone Japan announced four new 3G terminals including a model provided by Korean maker Samsung. This is the first Samsung model to become available in Japan. The Vodafone V804SS (image at right) is said to be the world’s thinnest 3G handset and features a 2.3-in QVGA main LCD display, 2 cameras, stereo twin speakers, music features and the “Deru Moji” 3D Pictogram Display. The other handsets include models from Sharp (V804SH), NEC (V804N) and Toshiba (V904T).

The devices should be available in the market by mid-March.

With these latest models, Vodafone Japan also introduced three new 3G services: “Deru Moji 3D Pictogram Display,” which enables pop-up 3D animations in received messages and is compatible with the 804SS, 904T and 804N; the “Vodafone live! CAST” service, which delivers “mobile magazines” to handsets overnight and appears to be similar to KDDI’s modestly successful EZ Channel content delivery service (compatible with the 904T and 804N); and, the “Vodafone Address Book,” a service that lets customers back up their handset address book to a network server so information remains safe even when a handset is lost or broken (compatible with the 904T). WWJ subscribers log in for more details and images.

DoCoMo Announces 702i-series 3G Handsets

DoCoMo Announces 702i-series 3G HandsetsNTT DoCoMo held a press conference in downtown Tokyo this afternoon to announce the spring roll-out of five new handsets in the 702i-series for FOMA 3G phones (Sharp, NEC, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and Panasonic). The series includes three ‘designer’ models — a first for DoCoMo. The carrier invited three prominent designers to work on the SH702iD, the N702iD and the F702iD. If the solid success with designer models enjoyed by competitors KDDI and Vodafone is any hint, DoCoMo should do modestly well with this new low-budget series.

Big D appears unconcerned over the potential conflict in the series’ naming. The three designer 702s are dubbed “iD” — possibly for “i-mode designer” or “independent designer.” However, the Fujitsu model is also FeliCa- and mobile Suica-compatible, and all FeliCa models to date have been dubbed “iC” (indicating ‘IC chip’). Should the Fujitsu therefore be the F702iCD? The giant carrier also seems keen on promoting its new iD credit-card (website) having created this cool ‘Vitruvian Man’ logo that we’ve noticed splashed all over Tokyo the last few weeks. That new m-commerce application is included on the Fujitsu 702iD model (but not the SH702iD or the N702iD) and we expect there could well be some confusion in the marketplace between these unrelated iD brands.

This is the first 70x-series to offer automatic Security Scan, which uses automatic downloads in the background to update phones with the latest security software from DoCoMo. The five models will be exhibited at Aoyama Spiral from January 17 to 22. More details on today’s press conference after the jump

Vodafone KK December Subscriber Count

Vodafone have just released their December net adds: 63,700, showing a strong 3G gain of 236,800 and a to-be-expected 2G loss of 173,100. This indicates the carrier gained at least some new 3G customers from other carriers if we assume all Vodafone 2G customers who upgraded to 3G stayed with the carrier. Vodafone KK subscribers are now, overall, trending up, if still slowly.

KDDI Posts December Sales

KDDI have just posted their December net adds: 348,300, based on an increase of 398,300 in CDMA 1X users and a loss of 50,000 cdmaOne (2G) customers. This compares to DoCoMo’s presumed increase of 1,422,700 based on their public November FOMA count of 18,588,300 and their statement last week that they surpassed 20 million on 29 December. No word yet from Vodafone nor from the TCA website. Link to full details after log-in.

Wireless Watch Japan – Top Stories for 2005

Wireless Watch Japan - Top Stories for 2005We published 596 articles on Wireless Watch Japan in 2005 and thought you might enjoy looking back at the most popular Japan mobile industry highlights from the year. The links below, three from each month, represent the two top stories (by volume of visitor requests) and a third which we consider a significant development in that 30-day period.

It’s been a year of explosive year in the mobile world and 2006 is set to be even much more interesting with faster mobile networks, more powerful handsets and compelling contents settling into the mainstream. Here in Japan, we are expecting a dramatic increase in m-commerce adoption, driven in part by Mobile Suica’s launch, set for later in January and the start of ‘One-Seg’ digital TV broadcasting starting — on all three carriers — on 1 April (no joke). We also see a potential increase in churn as a result of the (belated) introduction of number portability and with three new carriers entering the market, even DoCoMo is concerned.

One of the more obvious action areas in 2006 will be the increase of M&A activity at all levels; in particular, look for consolidation in the Japanese handset market. Meanwhile, lets boldly predict that we’ll have at least a few 3.5G (HSDPA) phones on the streets of Tokyo by this time next year. Interesting times ahead, indeed. Get all the skinny after the jump!