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DoCoMo Announces BlackBerry for Japan

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and Research In Motion (RIM) announced today that DoCoMo will start marketing RIM’s BlackBerry handheld devices to its corporate customers in autumn 2006. The BlackBerry handheld devices to be sold in Japan will operate on both W-CDMA (UMTS) and GSM/GPRS networks and will be useable around the world for voice and data communications. BlackBerry Enterprise Server software tightly integrates with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise, and enables secure, push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.

Re: DoCoMo and GSM Handsets

The recent article via the Yomiuri about DoCoMo’s roadmap for adding GSM functionality to their handset fleet is spreading across the web like wildfire. The point missed would be that ‘the news’ was actually announced back in February! “NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Renesas Technology Corp., Fujitsu Limited, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Sharp Corporation today announced that they will jointly develop a comprehensive mobile phone platform combining a single-chip LSI for dual mode handsets supporting HSDPA /W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE, and core software such as operating systems.”

Tokyo's amazing week: UK/Jpn JV, 'SoftBank Mobile' and MNP

Watching the business of wireless in Japan just keeps getting better!

Last week brought a slew of new announcements, including news of the JPY11 bn SoftBank/Vodafone joint venture, confirmation that the company formerly known as Vodafone KK will henceforth be known as ‘SoftBank Mobile’ and details on the long-awaited MNP (mobile number portability) implementation. Subscribers can access WWJ’s insight on the first two in today’s Viewpoint (here), but read on below for our take on MNP — possibly the biggest revolution in Japan mobile since i-mode itself.

First, a little history.

Until now, the Big Three cellular carriers (DoCoMo, KDDI/au and Vodafone), as well as the smaller PHS carriers (Willcom, Astel, etc.), have run their networks as independent — and highly competitive — fiefdoms. There has been nothing like number portability or, for that matter, portability of any other service/feature. If you switched carriers, you lost your number…

DoCoMo Quadruple Play Includes Windows DRM, HSDPA, 7 New Credit-Card Phones

F902iSIn a rare quadruple play, DoCoMo today issued three new handset announcements plus one new technology tie-up press release. The first handset news includes the long-expected new credit-card-enabled phones that will come bundled with the carrier’s ‘DCMX’ Java-and-IC-chip-based credit card. The new 902iS series FOMA 3G handsets mark the latest step in DoCoMo’s transformation from Just Another Mobile Phone Company to full-featured financial services provider.

The carrier also said it had agreed with Microsoft to incorporate Windows Media technologies in DoCoMo’s F902iS 3G handset, to be released this summer. The first-time collaboration means that the F902iS will support both Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD). The carrier will also evaluate the incorporation of Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s version of SMPTE VC-1 technologies, in future handsets. The press release states that incorporating Windows Media technologies will enable NTT DoCoMo handsets to play music downloaded to a PC from more than 100 online music services around the world, and also support music content ripped from CDs in the highly efficient Windows Media Audio format (login for details).

Seven Asian Mobile Operators Form Alliance

DoCoMo has just announced that it will join the, tentatively called, “Asia-Pacific Mobile Alliance,” with six other Asian mobile carriers. The group also includes; Far EasTone – Taiwan, Hutchison Essar – India, Hutchison Telecoms – Hong Kong, KT Freetel – Korea, PT Indosat – Indonesia and StarHub Ltd. from Singapore. The alliance boasts a combined customer base of about 100 million mobile subscribers over eight countries and regions.

Our 5th Birthday!

Our 5th Birthday!This week marked a major milestone for WWJ! In one form or another, I’ve been writing this email newsletter for five years — and what a five year term it’s been!

I spent a couple hours last night looking over past WWJ newsletters, and was struck by how much Japan’s mobile scene has changed. In 2001, when I started writing a weekly mobile-focused newsletter for J@pan Inc, i-mode had just celebrated its second birthday, KDDI had yet to roll out CDMA 1X services and the No. 3 competitor in the market was known as “J-Phone.”

Today, DoCoMo is far in the lead with their 3G FOMA service and music and TV are the new hot trends; i-mode itself has become almost dasai (uncool). KDDI have created one of the mightiest and most unified mobile platforms on Earth, with GPS-based blogging, shopping and PC Internet integration drawing huge usage. The company formerly known as J-Phone is about to become the company formerly known as Vodafone as Masayoshi Son attacks 3G mobile with the same successful discount focus with which he attacked NTT and home broadband.

Bonus ‘those were the days’ tidbits via the WWJ Newsletter after the jump!