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To: S100 who wrote (41686)	9/17/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Respond to of 152472

Bandai to Use DoCoMo Network for Cell Phone Games By Chiharu Kamimura at Bloomberg News 17 September 1999 Bandai Co. plans to tap into the Internet to deliver game software to cellular phone users in an attempt to expand the distribution of its games to Japanese teenagers and preteens. Japan's largest toymaker, best known for its pocket-sized Tamagotchi virtual pet game, will next year begin distributing its Internet game software to users of a new i-mode cellular phone being developed jointly by NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo) and Sun Microsystems Inc. of the U.S., company spokeswoman Miki Taneda said. Currently, Bandai provides services for the i-mode, a service which allows users to check stock prices and conduct bank transactions, among other uses, over a mobile phone. Users can get static images like the Hello Kitty character and play a quiz game on the phone display. With the help of Sun's Java technology, which allows programs to run on different computer systems, users will be able to download moving images to i-mode phones. Trials begins in October although the name and cost of the new service haven't been decided, Taneda said. "Cellular phones have become an attractive platform because they're more widely in use," said Akira Namegawa, an analyst at ING Baring Securities Japan. "Other gamemakers will likely join the business." NTT DoCoMo, Japan's dominant cellular phone operator, holds 57% of Japan's 45.6 million subscribers to cellular phone services. Its i-mode service, which was started in February, has 1.47 million subscribers. Bandai and rival Nintendo Corp. announced earlier this year plans to link their portable machines to mobile phones, giving players the possibility of downloading and playing games over the Internet. The companies are fighting for the loyalties of Japanese teenagers and preteens, for whom cellular phones have become must-have items. Bandai released a handheld video game, the WonderSwan, in March. The game, which is priced at 4,800 yen ($45), is intended as a challenge to Nintendo's popular 10-year-old Game Boy. The company plans to release an Internet adapter by December and is projecting first-year shipments of around 2.5 million units. The company posted a current loss, or pretax loss from operations, of 4.7 billion yen for the year ended March, on sales of 232 billion yen, down 19%. The falling popularity of Tamagotchi, a big hit when introduced in November 1996, and failure to come up with a successor have hurt the company. Bandai's previous foray into the $15 billion global market for home video games was a costly failure. In 1996 it teamed with Apple Computer Inc. to produce the Pippin Power Player, a CD-ROM game device that connected to televisions and featured Internet access. The game made little headway against Sony's best-selling PlayStation or Nintendo's Nintendo 64, leading Bandai to liquidate its Pippin subsidiary last March at a cost of 11.1 billion yen. Bandai's shares fell 40 yen to 2,190 yen. NTT DoCoMo shares fell 50,000 yen to 1.86 million yen. Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved. C&W scraps global net company plan AOL Europe readies new expansion drive ETSI clashes with Net architects over numbering Cable sell-offs raise competition hopes in Europe African business set to benefit from oil project CI's silver anniversary review of its coverage Titans & visionaries share their scenarios of 2024 Satellite and subspace slug it out for broadband Data warehousing helps mine for gold Using bundled services to compete © EMAP Media 1999