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To: foundation who wrote (23909)	6/19/2002 8:02:39 AM
From: jackmore	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197036

KDDI, Digital Hollywood Award Creator for Mobile Contents June 19, 2002 (TOKYO)-- Digital Hollywood and KDDI Corp. on June 17 in Tokyo announced the winners of the "EZ Award," a mobile phone contest they cohosted. Ueda, creator of the animation entitled "Inside Mobile Phone," won the highest award (prize: 500,000 yen), while Surfvey's Java Game entitled "SRAZ EZ" and naggy Studio's movie entitled "Peace" won the runner-up awards (prize: 150,000 yen). (124.40 yen = US$1) The EZ Award is this year's first contest that KDDI and Digital Hollywood cohosted in an attempt to find talented mobile creators. "We plan to speed up the current transmission speed of KDD's mobile phone of 144kbps to 2.4Mbps by the fall of 2003. And we wish to further speed it up to 10Mbps in the period ahead. When that time comes, we do need rich contents," said Tadashi Onodera, president of KDDI, emphasizing the importance of finding talented contents creators. The best award winner, "Inside Mobile Phone," is an animation created out of the idea that two dwarfs living in the mobile phone play musical instruments every time a call comes in. "I decided on the mobile phone theme, as the contest was specifically aimed at contents that can be seen on the mobile phone. I managed to complete it in four hours," said Ueda, the winner. "The idea is very interesting. Mobile phone makers might very well adopt this as the animation for incoming call signs," Onodera commented. nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com

To: foundation who wrote (23909)	6/27/2002 9:26:39 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 197036

Challenges for i-mode outside Japan nst.com.my By FERINA MANECKSHA IT’S no secret that Japan’s largest telecommunications operator NTT DoCoMo Inc is expanding its successful i-mode service for wireless Internet connections across Asia in a big way.The company has confirmed that it is in discussions with local telecommunications giant Maxis Communications Berhad for possible roll-out of the services in Malaysia. Computimes caught up with NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode strategy managing director Takeshi Natsuno at last week’s CommunicAsia 2002 conference and exhibition in Singapore on its plans for i-mode. Global expansion NTT DoCoMo last year invested US$15 billion (RM57 billion) worldwide in expanding the service to the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany by investing in local telcos there. However, Natsuno says offering i-mode services by investing in local telcos offering the services is not necessarily the path the company will take.“In fact we concluded a non-investment deal two months ago with French mobile communications operator, Bouygues Telecom S.A., under which NTT DoCoMo will license and transfer technologies to the French operator. I-mode services are slated to be rolled out in France within the next one year.” Ultimate goal Natsuno stresses that the ultimate goal is not to expand i-mode overseas but rather to have a sustainable business model, with i-mode as the supporting strategy to convince more mobile operators worldwide to move to third generation (3G) networks. Currently, the second generation networks in Japan (which the i-mode service is offered) are not compatible with networks elsewhere but with 3G it is different, he adds. I-mode outside Japan Taiwan is the first country outside Japan in Asia to offer i-mode service through NTT DoCoMo’s partner, KG Telecommunications Co Ltd, who will offer the service on its general packet radio service (GPRS) network.Natsuno said with Taiwan’s GPRS network areas reaching Singapore, Hong Kong and China where KG Telecommunications has agreements with certain GPRS network operators in those countries, people in those three countries will also be able to enjoy i-mode service. Targets Currently, 20 per cent of NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode’s traffic revenue comes from Japan and Natsuno is looking at repeating this success in other countries where i-mode is offered. ( ???? must mean 20% of DoCoMO's Japan revenue is from i-mode ) There are 33 million active i-mode users in Japan alone, which is about the same as America Online (AOL) subscribers at 34 million. “This makes i-mode singularly the largest leading Internet service and with this success we are expecting more synergies with worldwide markets,” Natsuno says. In Japan alone, i-mode revenues last year hit US$15 billion of NTT DoCoMo’s US$50 billion total revenues which included handset sales. The company estimates that at the end of the this year, about US$11 of its total US$53 average revenue per user will be derived from i-mode. The target, according to Natsuno, is to have six ( ???? must mean sixty ] million i-mode subscribers in Japan alone by 2004. And this is even before the huge migration to 3G is expected some time that same year. Potential While many in the industry are anxiously watching the success of i-mode outside Japan, sceptical analysts point to a number of reasons which could dampen its roll-out. The Japanese, for example, are known for their natural love of new technologies and gadgets and spend a great deal of time using the i-mode service while on public transportation such as the train. The same cannot be said of Americans, for example, who prefer private transportation than public. The optimistic ones such as Ovum’s Asia-Pacific senior analyst Jeremy Matthews says that if i-mode is considered as a good way of providing content and applications to mobile subscribers, (and less proprietary and culturally bound), then it has a good chance of surviving outside Japan. The focus instead, he adds, should be on whether mobile data services will start to help operators arrest declining revenues, rather than will i-mode “work” outside Japan. “Call it wireless application protocol (WAP) or i-mode or whatever, subscribers will only pay if it offers them some form of value that they cannot readily get elsewhere.”The fact that the i-mode service is a relatively efficient means of getting content and services in front of subscribers gives it added advantage of being “everywhere” than other similar technologies. And with focus on local content, marketing support and flexible billing, operators will finally start realising some serious mobile data revenues, he added. And lastly, while NTT DoCoMo does bring some advantages such as its relationship with handset manufacturers and content providers and more important, its experience, this does not mean that without it, an operator cannot make money from the wireless Internet. All the operator needs to do is to pay attention to the factors which have made i-mode a success, many of which are not proprietary to NTT DoCoMo. So if Natsuno’s confident and Matthews optimism is anything to go by, the replication of i-mode’s success in Japan would be seen soon and NTT DoCoMo’s 10-year corporate strategy, dubbed Vision 2010, which is aimed at growing the company based on five concepts – mobile multimedia, anytime, anywhere, anyone, global mobility support, integrated wireless solutions and customised personal service (or simply called MAGIC) – would be realised.

To: foundation who wrote (23909)	6/27/2002 9:27:30 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 197036

NTT DoCoMo files suit over mass e-mail advertising yomiuri.co.jp Yomiuri Shimbun NTT DoCoMo Inc. has filed suit with the Tokyo District Court against a Tokyo Internet advertising company, demanding 6.5 million yen in compensation for costs incurred when the company sent e-mail advertising a dating service to millions of nonexistent addresses. It is the first time NTT DoCoMo has attempted to sue an e-mail advertising company for abusing its i-mode service, company officials said. Fees for e-mail messages sent to cellular telephones are charged to the recipient of the message, not the sender. The company had sent e-mail to a large number of randomly generated i-mode addresses in April and May, of which 4 million turned out to be nonexistent. A new law to penalize companies for sending out unsolicited e-mail advertisements--often referred to as "spam"--to cellular phones will take effect July 1. "We intend to take strong legal action against those who send out spam," said an NTT DoCoMo official. According to the official, each e-mail sent to a nonexistent address costs NTT DoCoMo 1.2 yen because there is no account-holder to pay the telecommunications fee. The 6.5 million yen compensation demand includes investigation costs, the official said. In March, NTT DoCoMo introduced a new server in an attempt to halt the flow of spam, which not only costs the company money, but also causes computer network congestion. The advertising company somehow managed to bypass NTT DoCoMo's measures and continues to send millions of e-mails on the i-mode system. [ Does this mean it is OK to send out spam to real subscibers because they collect their 10 cent telecommunication fee? This doesn't sound like good customer relations! ]