Willcom
Willcom

Willcom

DoCoMo Brings Blackberry to Japan. Who Cares?

DoCoMo Brings Blackberry to Japan. Who Cares?Last Thursday, NTT DoCoMo announced they would deploy the super-popular BlackBerry email device, made by Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM), in Japan, in autumn 2006. At first glance, the news is pretty interesting.

One media report stated that “RIM stands to make potentially more money per customer with the DoCoMo deal by marketing its BlackBerrys in addition to its service.” Until recently, Japan lacked a decent, usable email device targeting corporate users.

Willcom has been offering Sharp’s super-cool Zero3, a Windows mobile OS device that has been flying off the shelves since the end of 2005, but it’s a consumer/prosumer device that is sold direct to the street and its POP/SMTP email capability doesn’t integrate (easily) into a corporate server.

[The full text of this article is available, for free, as an exclusive column contributed to the Wireless-Watch Community. — Eds]

Willcom Announces New Zero3 Smartphone

Willcom has announced an updated model of their hyper-popular smartphone, the W-ZERO3 series by Sharp. The WS004SH will hit the streets here on June 22nd and will be running pretty much the same spec. as the original version, with a couple of small exceptions. They have doubled the onboard flash memory from 128mb and added a 300,000 item dictionary, including a Japanese-English “DicLand Ver1.1” suite. Otherwise, it’s the same Windows Mobile 5.0 OS on an Intel PXA270 416MHz CPU with no improvement on the 1.3 mega-pixel camera or battery pack which have be the only serious complaint issues from owners who were so eager to buy the debut model last year.

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.

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).

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!