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Japanese cellular operator IDO scored a marketing coup with TV ads for its new cdmaOne service-launched in co-operation with DDI Cellular-when it "stole" actor Yuji Oda, right from under the noses of NTT DoCoMo. Oda, well-established as "the face" of DoCoMo advertisements, was shown in the first ad having difficulty making a call on a (DoCoMo-like) mobile phone. In a follow-up ad, he is pictured sneaking into a dealership and sheepishly asking for a pamphlet on cdmaOne. Rumour has it that the DoCoMo marketing director was so furious he overturned his desk.
The USP of the new cdmaOne service, IDO and DDI have stressed, is its superior voice quality as compared to the indigenous PDC. The take-off of the new digital services was a touch slow, but DDI indicates that this was due to a lack of available handsets. Once new models were added to the mix subscriptions increased and-including IDO-now stand at 1.73 million.
But NTT DoCoMo has little to worry about. Aside from its wealth- coffers are bulging from last year's IPO-and its comfortable 57 per cent share of the market, DoCoMo's new mobile Internet service iMODE has captured the imagination of the market. iMODE, which "can do everything bar brew a cup of tea", as the DoCoMo ad says, has attracted 1,361,000 customers (as of Sept. 5) since its February 22 launch, a sign-up rate of 80,000 per week. General manager, marketing and sales planning, Toshiyuki Koketsu expects the service to have four million users by the end of the year.
iMODE already boasts alliances with 131 content providers. Users can do the first and second stages of mobile banking services-checking accounts and transferring money to predetermined accounts-with 46 banks. They also enjoy ticketing services, hotel and airline reservations, and Internet email from ï1 per message. There is a choice of four different fortune telling services, seven news services, two different restaurant guides, and two suppliers of "mobile recipes". You can look up words in a Japanese/English dictionary search, apartment rental openings, karaoke song lyrics, and titles to songs currently on the radio. You can even get a daily "screen saver" of your favourite cartoon or a scanned-in picture of your partner.
Pricing of the services are based on the number of characters in the message, with 30 characters for ï0.9 and 100 characters for ï1.5, plus a subscription of ï300. The short data messages are transmitted over DoCoMo's PDC-P packet network. DoCoMo's iMODE growth was partly fuelled by the launch of multiple handset models. Panasonic, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and NEC now sell iMODE handsets.
Not to be outdone, DDI/IDO are rushing to implement WAP. Toshiyuki Koketsu at DDI Cellular claims that their cdmaOne WAP service will have all the content providers iMODE has already nabbed. "What they don't have," gloats DoCoMo's director, gateway business department, Keiichi Enoki, "is this," as he points to iMODE's subscription figures.
Enoki believes that iMODE's use of Compact html, filtering html content directly from the Internet, has greater long-term potential than WAP, as there is no need to rewrite content in a special language. But Japanese suppliers are committed to manufacturing anything the customers will buy. Ten Japanese manufacturers have licensed microbrowsers from Phone.com for their new wireless phones. DDI Cellular says from next April all new phones will be WAP-compatible.
Companies taken on the running of Japan's PHS networks, struggling under crippling accumulated losses from mad handset subsidisation in a market where cellular has boomed, are still finding the challenge of competing with cellular a difficult one. But reports of PHS's demise have been greatly exaggerated. DDI Pocket and TTNet (which took over Astel) are both implementing an improved handover functionality called 'Edzi' and DDI-P is stressing its upgraded 64kbit/s data rates.
TTNet is leveraging its fixed line network to promote PHS for Wireless LAN. NTT DoCoMo hopes its dual mode PHS/PDC 'Doccimo' will be the answer to PHS's inferior coverage as compared to cellular, but subscription is hampered by the regulatory necessity of issuing dual subscriptions with two monthly fees and two phone numbers.
PHS messaging is booming, with DDI-P revealing that 'P-mail' calls account for 46.1 per cent of its traffic. Innovative new terminals are hitting the market including Tegacky- Toshiba's hand-written message-only terminal- Epson's 'Locatio' GPS location finder and Kyocera's 'Visual Phone' videophone, although these applications, says DDI-P president Takeshi Okada, have not yet taken off.
Susie Helme is Editor of Mobile Communications Asia
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