Month: January 2007

  • Mickey mouse and Disneychannel use QR-Codes

    Mickey mouse and Disneychannel use QR-Codes

    Disneychannel places advertisements with huge QR-code on Tokyo’s roofs. People passing by point their mobile phones at Mickey’s QR-code, and the mobile phone takes them to Disneychannel’s mobile site. QR codes were developed in the 1990s by Toyota affiliate Denso-Wave to manage car parts – today they are by far the best way to link…

  • European Central Bank (ECB) uses QR-codes

    QR codes were developed in the 1990s to manage car parts – today they are by far the best way to link mobile phones to almost anything. In many applications QR codes are cheaper, easier, more flexible and more secure than RFID and NFC. The European Central Bank (based in Frankfurt) manages the EURO, is…

  • 3G Summit and Mobile Payment workshop

    3G Summit and Mobile Payment workshop

    Mobile Payment workshop and Global 3G Evolution Forum in Tokyo – Makuhari 3GPP, UMTS-Forum, Verizon and Docomo and others 22-25 January 2007 MarcusEvans organized the “Global 3G Evolution Forum” in Makuhari near Tokyo. Speakers included: Takanori Utano, Executive Vice-President and CTO of DoCoMo, Takehiro Nakamura of NTT and Vice-Chairman of 3GPP Jean-Pierre Bienaime, Chairman of…

  • Mobile subscriptions grow by 5 million in Japan during 2006

    Japan’s mobile subscriber numbers grew by about 5 million in 2006. Because of the much higher ARPU, Japan’s mobile market again grew by a couple of Finlands during 2006. A growing number of people have more than one mobile phone, to take advantage of the best rates, eg for mail, voice and data. We expect…

  • NFC prepaid fare cards are Nikkei Marketing Journals most popular product of the year 2006

    NFC prepaid fare cards are Nikkei Marketing Journals most popular product of the year 2006

    Annual Nikkei Marketing Journal (NMJ) ranking list of most successful products NFC prepaid fare cards ranked near the top of most popular products for 2006 Every year Nikkei Marketing Journal publishes a ranking list of the most successful products of the past year in the form Sumo wrestling results are traditionally displayed: there is a…

  • Human vending machine in Tokyo

    Human vending machine in Tokyo

    Catching attention on the world’s most busy crossing: Shibuya Hachiko Creative marketing in Tokyo by Gerhard Fasol Shibuya Hachiko square (in Japan usually called “scramble”) is certainly among one of the world’s most busy street crossing, and therefore also one of the places in the world with the highest density of advertising and marketing efforts,…

  • Customized QR code using in-built redundancy to display color and embedded graphics

    Customized QR code using in-built redundancy to display color and embedded graphics

    QR codes in color and with embedded graphics using in-built redundancy by Gerhard Fasol QR codes for mobile phones started in Japan in August 2002 QR codes have been developed around 1994 by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave – about 20 years ago- for car parts management at Toyota’s factories, and the first applications of QR…

  • PASMO: IC cards for transport

    On March 18, 2007, more than 100 transportation companies (26 railway companies and 75 bus companies) – moving 30 million people of the Tokyo region – will switch to the IC card ticketing and e-cash system named “PASMO”. PASMO will interoperate and partially compete with SUICA. Preparations go back more than 20 years, when Japan’s…

  • Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Japan

    Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Japan

    Mobile number portability created winners and losers in only two months – the main business challenge for Japanese operators is to avoid a price war. KDDI is the clear winner in the first round, DoCoMo suffers a setback, and SoftBank (which acquired Vodafone-Japan) did better than expected. Today we released the 23rd edition of our…

  • NEW YEAR on i-Mode and EZ-web

    Both docomo’s i-Mode and KDDI’s EZweb top menu pages display Season Greetings and reflect Japan’s seasonal mood: autumn sports days in schools, skiing in winter, Halloween and New Year. Here are this year’s New Year greetings for the Year of the boar on i-mode and EZweb which were displayed from January 1, 2007 for a…