Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile-phone company, said customers at its mobile-phone unit in Japan spent an average of 4.3 percent less in the first quarter on their monthly phone bills. Customers of Vodafone’s J-Phone Co. spent an average of 6,980 yen in the three months ended June 30, down from 7,290 yen a month in the same period a year earlier.
Vodafone Chief Executive Chris Gent steps down next week after more than 17 years at the mobile phone titan, lowering the curtain on the last of the old guard of Europe’s shaken telecoms industry. Gent, 55, is one of the few chief executives whose reputation remains largely unscathed in a market where heads rolled and big-name firms sought financial rescue after one of the most dramatic share price falls on record.
If any of you begin to note a slightly limey tone to future Viewpoints, it’s because the WWJ team has a new member, moi – Paul Kallender, as Tokyo correspondent. Take a look at my my bio. below and you will see that I am fully capable of deploying my creative weapons of article construction well within 45 minutes! I’ll be filing weekly with my take on the trends animating Japan’s mobile biz, as well as offering insight you can’t get from our competitors -most of whom either don’t live in Japan or are not actually independent journalists. I can’t follow in ex-editor-in-chief Daniel Scuka’s footsteps (partly because he’s in Germany and I’m in Japan), but I do hope you’ll bear with meas I attempt in my own way to “rip the faceplate” off Japan’s wireless industry. Given my Aikido background, I will be doing my best to at least throw some of the PR pap journalists have to rewrite into the digital dustbin of history. In short, come to WWJ for the stuff you can’t get elsewhere.
British mobile giant Vodafone has Japan on tenterhooks by continuing to remain mum on its deal to sell the core fixed-line business of the Japan telecom group to Ripplewood Holdings or other buyers.
Herewith, I’d like to query you, the loyal and keen WWJ readers (some 30% of whom are in Europe, according to last fall’s subscriber survey), on what an outsider needs to know about Europe’s mobile Internet. What are the companies, technologies, business models, and content services serving to boost the future? What – and who – matters most? Which will triumph: i-mode or Vodafone Live? Can Japanese terminal makers kick their way into the market? And will the Open Mobile Alliance boost Europe’s wireless industry far ahead of Japan’s – given sufficient buy-in from content providers and software creators?
If at first you don’t succeed, then try again – or so says NTT DoCoMo. I-mode, NTT’s mobile multimedia messaging service, was launched in Germany, Holland and Belgium almost a year ago by network operator KPN NV (KPN), but consumers weren’t keen. Now, the Japanese mobile network operator is launching i-mode in France and Spain, and is hoping this second European push succeeds.
