Japanese wireless service operator Willcom Inc., owned by U.S. investment fund Carlyle Group and Japanese electronics firm Kyocera Corp, will soon start choosing book-runners for its public share offering planned as early as next year, financial sources said. Willcom added 64,900 subscribers in February for a total of 3.8 million — an increase of 25 percent since March last year when it introduced the flat-rate voice plan.
The Telecom Carriers Assoc. stats just released for February sales activity indicate that the majority of mobile phone customers in Japan have now migrated to 3G. DoCoMo added over 828,000 new 3G contracts for a total of 22 million, KDDI/au added 309,000 for 21 million and Vodafone managed to sign-up 195,000 new 3G customers for a total of just under 3 million.
Reports in the Japanese business press have suggested that publisher Bandai Namco is about to announce the launch of a new mobile gaming device, which would be aimed at the children’s market and launched with mobile network operator Willcom. The new service, Kids Mobile, would be co-launched by Bandai Namco and Willcom, a Japanese mobile operator which was spun out of major operator KDDI in mid-2004, and is now co-owned by Kyocera and the Carlyle Group.
As WWJ predicted last month, the latest Telecommunication Carriers Association numbers confirm that DoCoMo has indeed gone on to ‘Grab [the] 3G Lead from KDDI.’ OK — so the news isn’t startling given that the trend for the past several months has been growing in DoCoMo’s favor. The news that has been below almost everyone’s radar screens, however, is the exceptional performance of upstart PHS carrier Willcom and its success in attracting new customers compared to third-place 3G carrier Vodafone. The folks over at Willcom posted a net subscriber gain of 80,200 in January compared to Vodafone’s paltry 17,600 result.
Sonus Networks, Inc., a leading supplier of service provider Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure solutions, announced today that WILLCOM, Inc., a major Japanese provider of wireless data and voice services and the largest operator employing Personal Handyphone System (PHS) technology in Japan, has selected Sonus Networks as the foundation for its new nationwide long-distance network to support WILLCOM’s PHS system. This agreement marks the development of Japan’s largest VoIP network for PHS subscribers. WILLCOM will utilize key components of the Sonus solution including the GSX9000 Open Services Switch, the PSX(TM) Call Routing Server, and the Sonus Insight(TM) Management System, which includes the Element Management System (EMS).
Skype has just introduced two new, updated clients for the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform: Skype for Pocket PC Beta version 1.2 and Skype for Pocket PC low CPU Beta version. This latest release claims full support for low-CPU devices with 300+ MHz processors. Users will be able to download and install the Internet telephony application with Danish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese Brazil, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish language plug-ins and it also supports the new call-forwarding feature and landscape mode for 240×240 and 480×480 screens.
We expect to see even more buzz on this development in the local wireless community with Willcom’s new Zero3 dual-mode Smartphone, made by Sharp, which just hit the street here last week. In fact, eager buyers were lining up to order the unit in early December and we’ve even noticed a Wiki site [Japanese only] dedicated to the Zero3, one of the hottest QWERTY handsets available in the domestic market.
The potential of VoIP flat-rate voice calling for mobile — including long-distance — takes another huge step with this announcement. Yes, it’s a narrow niche of users who will adopt this here… for now. However, for incumbent cellcos, the kanji is on the wall and they will undoubtedly have to respond to this truly disruptive technology if they wish to save their voice-centric business model.
