Lakers,
re: Japan wireless stuff from "The Japan Inc Newsletter"
General Edition Sunday January 28 2001 Issue No. 118
<< It's BREW time baby! >>
Here's some stuff that's "brewing" in Japan.
Yamakita is on SI strike, I guess, till they fix the fonts. least so he says.
Meantime it will be interesting to say how KDDI ties BREW into their Openwave plans.
Although DoCoMo is about to implement Java on phones, I suspect it will be primarily on the "FOMA" card. Intresting to se what KDDI does with that on their 3G (2GHz)implementation ... phone, card, both.
Java Phones:
>> If you haven't seen one of the new i-appli Java i-mode phones yet, they came out on Friday, you'll be impressed. NTT DoCoMo has already lined up a menu of over 100 content items, and some of them are surprisingly good! We think Java on the phone is such a no-brainer that everyone will buy them as a matter of course within 6 months from now.
Of course, Java for the cell phone makes a lot of sense for NTT DoCoMo as well, so you can bet that they will be pushing it hard. As noted in a mid-December investor report by Merrill Lynch, DoCoMo has its peak usage during the late evening and wants to move traffic peaks around more so as to stop its backbone from breaking. Java allows content developers to deliver a rich experience to the user, but can time information access so that they can take advantage of low-traffic times. Actually, it's not hard to imagine an enterprising company brokering micro-moments of network availability by supplying a small piece of add-on code to existing content vendor's applications.
Java on the phone is hot, and it's an obvious market opportunity.
- The Information Janitors... - <<
GPS/cell location service
>> A company that everyone has been expecting to jump into the mobile location services market, Secom, has finally announced that in April it will start a new nationwide location service called Coco-Secom. The new service will identify the location of customers through a combination of GPS satellites and cellular base stations. Right now the company is only offering the service through a specially developed terminal the same size as a cell phone. It will cost JPY500 per person and JPY900 per vehicle. ***Ed: not hard to see this unit being reduced to a SIM card for use within a cell phone.** (Source: JIN extract from Nikkei, Jan 26, 2001) <<
Full Story here:
nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com
DoCoMo Releases Dual-Standard Cell Phone
>> From the end of this month you'll be able to buy the N601wg dual standard phone from NTT DoCoMo, which will let you roam in Japan, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. The new phone supports both the Japanese PDC and international GSM standards. The phone will cost JPY211,000 ($1,788) or you can rent one for JPY6,600 ($56) per month. The overseas operator-partner is Hutchison, and coverage is limited to those areas served by Hutchison and its roaming partners. (Source: JIN extract from Nikkei, Jan 23, 2000) Full Story <<
DoCoMo Press Release here:
nttdocomo.com
- Eric - |
