Vodafone
Vodafone

Vodafone

Sharp Announces New Mobile AQUOS

Sharp announced they have developed a new LCD, based on ASV (Advanced Super View) technology found in the companies AQUOS line of TVs, for mobile handsets which features the industry’s highest (as of April 17) contrast ratio of 2,000:1 with a wide viewing angle of 176 degrees and a high-speed response time of 8 ms. According to the statement, by September 2007 the company will start shipping samples of this new 2.2-inch at 240 x 320 (QVGA) screen, targeted for 1Seg digital-tv enabled cell phones in Japan. Sharp started this trend with their 902SH model for Vodafone Japan in 2004 and their popular 905SH cycloid style design launched here in June last year, just in time for the World Cup. They have since followed-up with the so-called “2nd model” 911SH.

SoftBank Mobile – New Flagship Store

SoftBank Mobile - New Flagship StoreWith the flurry of activity around here lately we are somewhat behind on rolling out this quick video clip shot at SoftBank Mobile’s new Flagship store in Harajuku. Wisely located in Tokyo’s mobile youth grand central, and mere blocks away from KDDI’s Designing Studio, the company was handing out chocolates (a nice touch for Valentines day) and even had a few SoftBank Hawks baseball team personalities in the house to help celebrate their New Open launch event.

While Kitty-chan was apparently not available to promote her newly announced Swarovski Crystal handsets there was a good selection of the latest super sparkle designs, under glass, front and center. Of course the colorful 812SH Pantone series by Sharp were also easy to spot, however, for the most part there was not much in the way of selection for live working models on offer. That being said it’s certainly better than this Virtual Life SoftBank Mobile shop and hopefully the company will get more test-drive units on display in the future. As for our first impressions; it’s a definite improvement, in both size and location, when compared to the Vodafone’s earlier Megastore attempt in Shibuya several years ago.

Japan Mobile Subscriber Statistics

The Telecommunication Carriers Assoc. (TCA) released their official updated Japan mobile subscriber details (see graphic on our left nav.) for the month ending March 2007. While we had mentioned several times recently that March is the traditional handset replacement month, even WWJ was impressed to see the volume of activity achieved. KDDI’s AU brand continued to show the way with a net increase of 530,000 while DoCoMo, with their latest models line-up becoming more widely available, added a respectable 298,000 new contracts. SoftBank Mobile reported a total gain of 127,000 compared to only 63,000 year-on-year for March 2006 when the company was still running as Vodafone. By far the most interesting numbers relate to the continued migration towards 3G.

DoCoMo Tops Mobile Operator Rankings

DoCoMo and Vodafone have been assessed by ABI Research as occupying the “sweet spot” of “Market Innovation and Market Implementation,” in their latest Mobile Operator Performance Matrix, with high ratings on a range of indicators: CAPEX spend per user; non-voice revenue contribution; number and utility of applications and service deployments; EBITDA; share of the global subscriber market; and EBITDA margin.

Flat-Rate Data Plan Saved 10,000 Euro

We noted an interesting post on a local mobile developer’s site, which points out out how much money their flat-rate data plan saved the company in January. According to the scanned statement of the DoCoMo bill; “By using the pakehoudai option [a JPY 3,900 service plan option for unlimited usage of i-mode data traffic] you saved 1.67 million JPY this month.” They calculated the data packets used total just over 1GB (that’s hardcore — Eds) which would have cost approx. 10,000 Euro under the regular per packet billing model. Yikes!

Most Popular Japanese Handsets in 2006

We caught a feature article on a domestic mobile news site that ranked Japan’s most popular selling models for last year. For KDDI/au the W41CA by Casio was put on the market in February and maintained top place for almost 33 weeks. The continued success of that model was attributed to the feature set which includes; EZ FeliCa (mobile wallet), FM radio tuner, PC Site Viewer (Opera browser) and 2.6-inch wide screen display. The second half sales were dominated by the W43S “Walkman Phone” by Sony Ericsson. See the full ranking list after the jump.