Wednesday, February 25, 2009
72.5% of all digital mobile TV on this planet earth is in Japan
About 50 million mobile phones equipped with digital terrestrial mobile TV ("oneseg") have been delivered up until today - not counting "oneseg" tuners for PCs, car navigation units and stand-alone units. Comparing this number with reports of mobile TV roll-out in other countries around the world, we conclude that 72.5% of todays mobile phones with mobile TV are in Japan.
How much mobile TV do Japanese people watch on their mobile phones?
In the latest version of our mobile-TV report, we explain in detail our methods to determine that averaged over all of Japan's population of 125 million (including those who don't have a mobile-TV yet), the average viewing time is between 0.4 - 2.3 hours of mobile TV / month. WOW!
Mobile TV 2.0 (OneSeg-2)
Not surprisingly, Japan's media giants are now starting to move, and develop programming specially designed for mobile TV: for example "lunchbox" mobile TV broadcast to mobile phones from 12:00noon - 12:40pm weekdays with news, weather, diet information, summaries of TV shows... it's only a question of weeks or months now in Japan for mobile TV to develop into a totally new advertising and m-commerce medium, and some has started already.
Starting the global mobile internet revolution with i-Mode in February 1999, we can see Japan's leadership emerging in the mobile TV arena. Japan's challenge is to leverage this know-how globally, Japan missed this chance with i-Mode and left the field to iPhone and friends!
72.5% of all mobile phones with digital TV globally are in Japan:
In the same way as with mobile internet (i-mode), Japan is again the global forerunner in mobile TV, together with South Korea.
How much mobile TV do Japanese people watch on their mobile phones?
In the latest version of our mobile-TV report, we explain in detail our methods to determine that averaged over all of Japan's population of 125 million (including those who don't have a mobile-TV yet), the average viewing time is between 0.4 - 2.3 hours of mobile TV / month. WOW!
Mobile TV 2.0 (OneSeg-2)
Not surprisingly, Japan's media giants are now starting to move, and develop programming specially designed for mobile TV: for example "lunchbox" mobile TV broadcast to mobile phones from 12:00noon - 12:40pm weekdays with news, weather, diet information, summaries of TV shows... it's only a question of weeks or months now in Japan for mobile TV to develop into a totally new advertising and m-commerce medium, and some has started already.
Starting the global mobile internet revolution with i-Mode in February 1999, we can see Japan's leadership emerging in the mobile TV arena. Japan's challenge is to leverage this know-how globally, Japan missed this chance with i-Mode and left the field to iPhone and friends!
72.5% of all mobile phones with digital TV globally are in Japan:
In the same way as with mobile internet (i-mode), Japan is again the global forerunner in mobile TV, together with South Korea.
Labels: business in japan, Japan, media, mobile TV, one-seg
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Professor Junichi Hamada, President of Tokyo University
Attended Professor Junichi Hamada's presentation at Tokyo University. Professor Hamada is expert on the legal aspects of journalism, freedom of press and media regulation. Professor Hamada will be the new President of Tokyo University from April 2009.
In his presentation Professor Hamada discussed the changes in the media sector, and of course also his views and strategies for Tokyo University.
Asked during question time about his views of University ranking lists, his answer was that serving society is much more important than ranking lists.
For my own work at Tokyo University see: Fasol Laboratory webpages
In his presentation Professor Hamada discussed the changes in the media sector, and of course also his views and strategies for Tokyo University.
Asked during question time about his views of University ranking lists, his answer was that serving society is much more important than ranking lists.
For my own work at Tokyo University see: Fasol Laboratory webpages
Labels: jun-ichi hamada, junichi hamada, tokyo university, university of tokyo
Friday, February 20, 2009
our future: hot, flat, and crowded... celebrating Ludwig Boltzmann's 165th birthday
Ludwig Boltzmann was one of the most important physicists and philosophers: it is almost impossible for any engineer, chemist or physicist to do a day's work without using Boltzmann's tools and results every day. Ludwig Boltzmann is this author's and Eurotechnology Japan KK's founder's great grandfather - and his excellence is our company's guiding light.
Ludwig Boltzmann was born 165 years ago on February 20, 1844, and last Friday, February 20, 2009 we celebrated by inviting several of Japan's science and technology leaders to the Ludwig Boltzmann Symposium in Tokyo with kind cooperation and hospitality by the Ambassador of Austria and the Austrian Embassy.
First speaker was Professor Hisashi Kobayashi, Founder of the IBM Tokyo Laboratory, former Dean of Engineering of Princeton University. He showed how Entropy and noise in communications is linked to Boltzmann's generalized Entropy and the H-Theorem. Coming from Princeton, Hisashi also showed us elegantly how strongly Einstein's work is linked to Boltzmann's.
Professor Kiyoshi Kurokawa, former Dean of Medicine of Tokai University, former President of Japan's Science Council and Advisor to two Japanese Prime Ministers and now Professor at Japan's new Political Science University, gave an intense and passionate speech about which changes are necessary to live in our future which will be hot (as in global warming), flat (as in global communications and internet) and crowded (due do population growth). Kiyoshi also made a passionate appeal to Japanese organisations (including the S&T leaders participating at our Symposium) to change, open up and compete globally.
Kazu Ishikawa of Exa Japan gave a fantastic demonstration how Boltzmann's equations are used to simulate airflow for the construction of cars, airplanes, jet engines ... Boltzmann's equations replace the macroscopic Navier-Stokes equations as numerical wind tunnels. Boltzmann's equations are particularly needed for the simulation of transients.
Finally, Gerhard Fasol, Ludwig Boltzmann's Great-Grandson, gave two talks: one talk about Ludwig Boltzmann's scientific achievements, his search for understanding the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics with mechanics, the effects of collisions and the generalization to non-equilibrium - leading the H-Theorem, and the generalization of Entropy and Boltzmann's philosophical work. The second talk introduced the human side of Ludwig Boltzmann: his life and his passions.
Photo: Hisashi Kobayashi shows why Boltzmann's work is important for telecommunications, and how Einstein's work is linked to Boltzmann's. Her Excellency, the Austrian Ambassador follows closely.
Photo: Hot, flat and crowded. In a passionate speech, former science and tech advisor of two Japanese Prime-Ministers, Kiyoshi Kurokawa talks about the future, and how to be prepared to compete.
Photo: The Austrian Ambassador invited the participants of the Ludwig Boltzmann Symposium to the Austrian Residence.
More photos here
Ludwig Boltzmann was born 165 years ago on February 20, 1844, and last Friday, February 20, 2009 we celebrated by inviting several of Japan's science and technology leaders to the Ludwig Boltzmann Symposium in Tokyo with kind cooperation and hospitality by the Ambassador of Austria and the Austrian Embassy.
First speaker was Professor Hisashi Kobayashi, Founder of the IBM Tokyo Laboratory, former Dean of Engineering of Princeton University. He showed how Entropy and noise in communications is linked to Boltzmann's generalized Entropy and the H-Theorem. Coming from Princeton, Hisashi also showed us elegantly how strongly Einstein's work is linked to Boltzmann's.
Professor Kiyoshi Kurokawa, former Dean of Medicine of Tokai University, former President of Japan's Science Council and Advisor to two Japanese Prime Ministers and now Professor at Japan's new Political Science University, gave an intense and passionate speech about which changes are necessary to live in our future which will be hot (as in global warming), flat (as in global communications and internet) and crowded (due do population growth). Kiyoshi also made a passionate appeal to Japanese organisations (including the S&T leaders participating at our Symposium) to change, open up and compete globally.
Kazu Ishikawa of Exa Japan gave a fantastic demonstration how Boltzmann's equations are used to simulate airflow for the construction of cars, airplanes, jet engines ... Boltzmann's equations replace the macroscopic Navier-Stokes equations as numerical wind tunnels. Boltzmann's equations are particularly needed for the simulation of transients.
Finally, Gerhard Fasol, Ludwig Boltzmann's Great-Grandson, gave two talks: one talk about Ludwig Boltzmann's scientific achievements, his search for understanding the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics with mechanics, the effects of collisions and the generalization to non-equilibrium - leading the H-Theorem, and the generalization of Entropy and Boltzmann's philosophical work. The second talk introduced the human side of Ludwig Boltzmann: his life and his passions.
Photo: Hisashi Kobayashi shows why Boltzmann's work is important for telecommunications, and how Einstein's work is linked to Boltzmann's. Her Excellency, the Austrian Ambassador follows closely.
Photo: Hot, flat and crowded. In a passionate speech, former science and tech advisor of two Japanese Prime-Ministers, Kiyoshi Kurokawa talks about the future, and how to be prepared to compete.
Photo: The Austrian Ambassador invited the participants of the Ludwig Boltzmann Symposium to the Austrian Residence.
More photos here
Labels: entropy, h-theorem, hisashi kobayashi, kiyoshi kurokawa, ludwig boltzmann, tokyo
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Top 10 mobile trends for 2009
Answering the question "Top 10 mobile trends for 2009: what would you choose?" We answer from our perspective here in Tokyo:
- Mobile payments and wallet phones
see our mobile payment report - GPS and location based services (LBS) such as navigation and mapping
see our location based services (LBS) report - Mobile search including location related search
- QR codes and other 2D bar codes for information input into mobile phones
see our location based services (LBS) report - Ultra low cost mobile phones for low end not only in emerging markets but also in advanced countries in economic crisis times
- Subsidized $1 mini-laptops with flat rate HSDPA (7.2Mbps) data plans
- WiMax networks come into commercial service
- Embedded B2B applications
- Beautiful OLED ultra-high resolution screens (bigger than iPhone displays)
- Mobile agent services
Labels: LBS, mobile payment, oled, QR, trends, walletphone
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Foggy Outlook for Global Tech Sector (CNBC TV interview)
More in our J-ELECTRIC report: http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/j_electric/
Labels: hitachi, panasonic, sharp, sony
Monday, February 09, 2009
Wild differences in operating margins for mobile, TV media groups and electricals
We analyze the effect of the crisis on operating margins in three different sectors:
(1) electronics,
(2) mobile communications,
(3) TV media groups.
In sector (1), Nintendo's margins are above 30% and increasing despite the crisis, while traditional electronics companies' margins are evaporating.
(2) for mobile operators DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank margins are 10%-20% and increasing despite the crisis! Could mobile phone usage be crisis resistant?
(3) TV media groups had healthy margins in the 10%-20% range back around 2001- however these margins have been slowly melting away, and TV group margins are heading to cross the zero line into the red zone by 2010-2011. Watch out for a TV media crisis. Read more below.
Consumer electronics sector operating margins:
Nintendo bucks the trend: while Japan's electronics firms' margins are dropping into the red, and have never been much higher than 5% during the last 10 years, Nintendo's operating margins are above 30% and rising despite the crisis.
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our report on Japan's electrical companies)
Mobile phone sector margins are 10% - 20% and rising despite the crisis.
Mobile phones seem to be resistant to the current crisis. DoCoMo's, KDDI's and Softbank's margins are healthy and improving despite the crisis.
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our JCOMM Report)
Margins of TV media groups have been melting away since their peak in 2001.
Back in 2001 Japan's TV media groups used to enjoy healthy margins of up to 20%. Over the last 8 years these healthy margins have molten away, and Japan's large TV media groups are likely to all simultaneously go into the red from 2010 onwards, unless dramatic action is taken. Media groups will need to grow profitable new business, e.g. mobile-TV, and other cross-media growth areas.
Could it be that recent anti-takeover measures have made the large TV media groups complacent?
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our J-MEDIA Report)
(1) electronics,
(2) mobile communications,
(3) TV media groups.
In sector (1), Nintendo's margins are above 30% and increasing despite the crisis, while traditional electronics companies' margins are evaporating.
(2) for mobile operators DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank margins are 10%-20% and increasing despite the crisis! Could mobile phone usage be crisis resistant?
(3) TV media groups had healthy margins in the 10%-20% range back around 2001- however these margins have been slowly melting away, and TV group margins are heading to cross the zero line into the red zone by 2010-2011. Watch out for a TV media crisis. Read more below.
Consumer electronics sector operating margins:
Nintendo bucks the trend: while Japan's electronics firms' margins are dropping into the red, and have never been much higher than 5% during the last 10 years, Nintendo's operating margins are above 30% and rising despite the crisis.
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our report on Japan's electrical companies)
Mobile phone sector margins are 10% - 20% and rising despite the crisis.
Mobile phones seem to be resistant to the current crisis. DoCoMo's, KDDI's and Softbank's margins are healthy and improving despite the crisis.
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our JCOMM Report)
Margins of TV media groups have been melting away since their peak in 2001.
Back in 2001 Japan's TV media groups used to enjoy healthy margins of up to 20%. Over the last 8 years these healthy margins have molten away, and Japan's large TV media groups are likely to all simultaneously go into the red from 2010 onwards, unless dramatic action is taken. Media groups will need to grow profitable new business, e.g. mobile-TV, and other cross-media growth areas.
Could it be that recent anti-takeover measures have made the large TV media groups complacent?
(Find full data, fully labeled graphics and analysis in our J-MEDIA Report)
Labels: business in japan, docomo, KDDI, media, nintendo, softbank, sony, TV
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Panasonic Warns on Loss (CNBC TV interview)
