Vodafone
Vodafone

Vodafone

Results of Survey on Cellphone Usage

Online market researcher infoPLANT conducted research regarding mobile phone use among 16,833 phone users (operators limited to NTT DoCoMo, au, vodafone) from September 6 to 13, 2005. When asked how often they access Websites via mobile phones, 73.8% of the respondents answered “almost everyday”, followed by “a few days a week (10.9%)”, “four to five days a week (10.4%)”, and “about one day a week (3.1%)”. More than 70% men and women of every age group except men aged 50 or older and women aged 40 or older replied “almost everyday”.

NTT DoCoMo Unveils 3G Push-To-Talk Phones

NTT DoCoMo Unveils 3G Push-To-Talk PhonesNTT DoCoMo have just the new 902i-series of 3G FOMA handsets, featuring the new "PushTalk" walkie-talkie-style communication service. PushTalk will run over the 3G packet communication network and will allow phones to be used like walkie-talkies for simultaneous, one-way communication from one 902i user to as many as four other 902i users. The service will be launched in the near future concurrently with the 902i-series. DoCoMo said they are planning to waive communications charges (5.25 yen for each one-way call) through the end of December 2005.

The announcement confirms recent rumours (reported on WWJ) that the giant carrier would market a walkie-talkie-style service, already popular in the US, to defend falling market share and respond to flat-rate voice and data products offered by KDDI/au, Vodafone Japan and Willcom.

Toshiba 803 Handset with Oasis SD

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.

Can Visto, Vodafone, Nokia Push Email into Corporate Pockets?

Nokia E-SeriesA brief prediction. While idly surfing about the web today, I noticed that Visto, a US-based developer of corporate email solutions, has started a Japanese-language website; there’s no new, startling information, but they’ve translated their product & corporate data, news releases, etc. — presumably, at some cost. Why the big effort? They’ve just announced a deal to deliver push email on Nokia’s new E-series business devices (did someone say "Looks like a Blackberry?"); they are also working with Vodafone in The Netherlands for mobile email.

It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to predict they’ve got a deal cooking with Big Red in Japan. Could Visto and Vodafone, the come-from-behind 3G carrier, have a chance to place a Nokia Blackberry-style device into Japan’s potentially lucrative corporate market, populated by salarymen who have until now disdained ultra-cool email-capable 3G phones for anything other than low-margin voice calls? Until now, only DoCoMo has provided any sort of mail-capable, PDA-type device, and only to mixed results (the devices, notably from Sharp and Motorola, have been rather pricey). December’s shaping up to be an interesting month.

Vodafone Announces 'Love Flat-rate'

Vodafone K.K. have just announced that on 1 November 2005 the company will introduce “Love Flat-rate,” Japan’s first mobile service that allows customers to call and send mail to a designated party as much as they like, according to a press release. The service name stands for the ability to call and mail the person ‘one loves most’ without worrying about the cost. The service lets a customer call and mail a designated party (one Vodafone K.K. phone number) without limitations, and discounts video calls by 50% for a monthly fixed charge of 300 yen (315 yen including tax).

Wireless Watch Japan Intelligence from CEATEC

Wireless Watch Japan Intelligence from CEATEC

The Mobile Intelligence Japan (MIJ) team spent Wednesday at the CEATEC show, checking out some of the most innovative mobile tech and services the Japanese ecosystem is currently developing. To start, Hitachi’s methanol fuel-cell handset for KDDI [ close-up image here ] was one of the major announcements made during this year’s event. Several Japanese electronics manufacturers, including Toshiba and Fujitsu, are working on a fuel-cell solution for powering and recharging cell phones and other portable devices; Fujitsu’s rather large (as big as a shoe?) version for DoCoMo provides up to 9 Watt-hours of juice.

There were also big line ups to view the new digital TV cell phones made by Sanyo, Panasonic and Sharp (for each of KDDI, DoCoMo and Vodafone) with plenty of people crowded around the NHK booth to test drive one of the units; all are due to launch by next spring and run for around 2 hours.

Later, we spotted Net2Com’s new IP-and-Skype handset available (since last week) for Livedoor mobile customers and were surprised to see a prototype streaming satellite handset from DoCoMo. The Mobaho! compatible phone — a full FOMA 3G device — will receive music and other programming direct from Mobile Broadcasting Corp.’s bird high above Tokyo and will launch next spring; the Mitsubishi-made device has about 2 hours of continuous playback time and appears intended to steal some of KDDI’s Chaku-Uta-Full thunder. Be sure to watch our latest video program featuring EZ Channel.

Finally, your WWJ crew had a chance to sit down and speak with Dave Graveline to record a radio interview covering some of the show’s highlights to be broadcast on 10 October.