With the launch of Casio’s A5403CA for KDDI, Sharp’s SH505iS for DoCoMo, and our old friend the V601SH from Sharp to Vodafone, Japan has truly entered the 2-megapixel era. Beyond this, KDDI is planning A5502K with a xenon lamp flash unit this month. With two megapixels and onboard electronic flash, photography with mobile phones will make major inroads into digital camera territory.
The difference between walking the walk and talking the talk was painfully clear at last week’s 3G Mobile Forum 2004 conference held but a home run away from Tokyo Disneyland’s Magic Mountain. The four-day event hit the airwaves running with a keynote from NTT DoCoMo’s Keji Tachikawa, who was able to reconfirm DoCoMo’s solid plans for FOMA through the year. But given the surplus of inertia that’s dragging 3G launches– actual and putative– the conference swayed on the tides of optimism and not a little understated recrimination between carriers, contents providers, business platform providers and engineers about the potential if not the reality of 3G outside of Japan, Korea and (possibly?) the UK.
This viewpoint hoists the petard on our exclusive video interviews with mobile phone inventor and 4G actualist Martin Cooper, who tells us about the potential and pratfalls of the wireless world as he sees them 30 years after he made that first call. We also have Playboy.com’s Markus Grindel telling us about the potential for adult content in the wireless environment, and last but definitely not least a high-paced program with prolific author and analyst Tomi Ahonen, a man who single-handedly lends a new meaning to ubiquity; he seems to be just about everywhere in the wireless space, and boy, is he always switched on. We’ll have this terrific triptych of programs up in the coming weeks, but first, let’s take a look at some interesting points at last week’s conference.
Tune in for a WWJ exclusive year-end interview with IDC Japan Communication Research Division’s Senior Analyst Michito (Mitch) Kimura. In this video program, Kimura, a veteran IDC analyst, casts his eyes on the ups and downs over the last year in the world of wireless and takes a look at prospects for 2004. He details the strategy at Japan’s three carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Vodafone, and offers his view on the prospects for Japan’s ever-surging content business. Kimura-san also gave us his perspective on the continued evolution of 3G, handset replacement cycles, and – a favorite topic of ours – Japan’s first packet pricing war.
KDDI has taken more than 50 percent of new subscribers for the third month in a row, and there is good news at last for Vodafone, for the first time since June the struggling carrier actually broke the 100,000 barrier. DoCoMo however ended the year down in Japanese carriers unrelenting battle to get more cellies in pockets and handbags. The latest figures out show that KDDI took a huge 289,500 subscribers, more than double that of DoCoMo’s 114,600.
Service-centric platforms are pushing towards Linux and Symbian OS, a move toward flexibility and customization being pushed by DoCoMo, Vodafone and Orange will play an important role in pushing smart phone sales to 150 million units, according to research firm ABI. “With increasing competition and high churn rates,” explains ABI analyst Kenil Vora, “operators have felt the need to differentiate their products.”
How Japan is different: Pre-paid in the U.S. is for those with dodgy credit ratings, but in Japan, Vodafone’s latest nibble at the edges of the Japanese market now includes an 24-hour online prepaid service called Prepaid Online Recharge that includes an SMS service that automatically informs customers when their account is close to expiration or when their balance is low.
