Japan to Lead World in 3G Mobile Telephony, Former Ericsson
Executive Says
March 7, 2001 (TOKYO) -- Japan has a vital role to play in the uptake of third-generation
mobile telephony such as W-CDMA and cdma2000, said Charles Harvey, Jr. director of
Wireless Sales & Market Development of Redback Networks Inc.
"Without a doubt, Japan will be the driving force of the world cellular market," he
added.
Harvey currently serves as the marketing director for wireless services at Redback , a
network equipment vendor based in the United States. He made his comments March 1
at a press conference at which Redback's Japanese subsidiary announced its business
strategy. Previously with LM Ericsson of Sweden, Harvey was instrumental in
promoting the growth of second-generation mobile phones in Korea and Hong Kong.
Harvey believes that Japan is now incubating a 3G applications environment that will be
foremost in the world, where we'll see a whole slew of new business applications evolve
specifically for cell phones.
As evidence for his prediction, Harvey notes that two 3G mobile communication
systems will compete for dominance in Japan: the W-CDMA system supported by the
NTT DoCoMo Group and the J-Phone Group, and the cdma2000 system that KDDI
plans to provide.
In Harvey's opinion, each carrier will provide functionality for personal location services
via 3G mobile phones. But as the competition heats up, they'll start competing with one
another in how they leverage that functionality. That will give rise to a huge variety of
marketing applications for providing information optimally matched to the location of
each cell phone user, he said.
As an example of the possibilities, Harvey suggested that an oil company might deliver
electronic coupons for purchasing gas at discount prices to the cell phones of people
located near gasoline stations.
"With two different communication systems competing for supremacy, we'll
undoubtedly see all sorts of other applications emerge that nobody has ever imagined
before," Harvey said.
Related story: Ericsson, J-Phone Team for 3G Mobile Telecom Services
(Nikkei Computer) |
