QR-codes (QR =Quick Response) seem to be everywhere. Amazon.co.jp has an i-Appli, which reads the ISBN from the barcode on the back of a book and takes you directly to the Amazon.co.jp i-mode site to order the book instead of buying it in the bookshop.
People in the mobile industry have QR-codes on their business cards:
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Amazon.co.jp introduced a barcode reader i-Appli (JAVA application for DoCoMo’s i-Mode phones), with which shoppers in brick-and-mortar stores can directly compare the prices with Amazon.co.jp’s mobile webstore prices. If the shopper prefers, he/she can order directly by i-Mode mobile phone from Amazon.co.jp online while still standing in front of the shelves of the brick-and-mortar store.
With this barcode reading mobile phone application (i-Appli), Amazon.co.jp is directly taking the competition into brick-and-mortar stores, battling on the same ground.
User interface of Amazon.co.jp’s barcode reading i-Appli – click to scan:
The customer can directly scan the barcode with his/her Docomo i-Mode phone, and the Amazon.co.jp barcode i-Appli:
On the next screen Amazon.co.jp’s i-Appli shows the same product’s page in the Amazon.co.jp mobile store. The customer can directly order with one click if he/she prefers Amazon.co.jp’s offer instead of the brick-and-mortar store, where he/she is currently shopping. This i-Appli allows Amazon.co.jp to catch customers from within traditional stores.
Read our QR-code report for in-depth analysis and lots of applications of QR-codes and bar codes in Japan.
Turns out that music is a killer application on mobile – we are working on a number of projects in the mobile music field. We just completed our “Mobile Music Japan” report.
With an incredibly much smaller potential customer base KDDI/AU delivered more downloads of 20-30 second songs (chaku-uta) than Apple’s i-Tunes. Motorola reportedly announced a mobile phone incorporating i-Tunes at the recent CES show in Las Vegas. KDDI/AU‘s tremendous success with chaku-uta indicates that combining Motorola phones with i-Tunes will be very successfull indeed. AU reported 1 million Chaku-Uta-Full downloads within the first 48 days of service (chaku-uta-full started on November 19, 2004).
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Finland’s Government R&D and technology agency TEKES engaged our company to prepare input for the planning of TEKES’ five year VAMOS project on mobile services.
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In today’s Wallstreet Journal (Dec 7, 2004), Mike Volpi, Senior VP of CISCO’s routing technology group, is quoted as saying:
“In the past the internet business models, technologies and applications were all coming from the US, but today, through broadband, Japan is about to become the number one country in the area of Internet. In the future, I believe Internet business models will come from Japan.”
More about broadband and internet in Japan in our report: “Japan’s Telecommunication Industry” (pdf-file)
For the full article, see: “Fujitsu, Cisco plan to team up on routers” (Wallstreet Journal, Dec 7, 2004, subscription required)
CISCO announced to open an R&D Center in Japan in the first half of 2005: “Cisco Invests US $12 Million in Japanese R&D Center”.
Read an interview with Mike Volpi here: “Mike Volpi on Why Cisco is Investing in a New R&D Center in Tokyo, Japan”.
On 13 October 2004, KDDI/AU announced “talby”, the third phone in their “AU design series”. Volume sales start in December 2004. We expect that “talby” will be similarly successful as “infobar” one year ago.
“talby” is a fully featured 3G phone with camera (640×480 pixel), QVGA display, EZappli/BREW, Chaku-uta, email, EZweb, PIM, GPS/EZnaviwalk,…
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Softbank is rapidly becoming the third universal telco in Japan, targeting NTT’s most important income streams. KDDI of course is also targeting NTT’s fixed line income.
On November 2, 2004, NTT announced plans to compete: NTT will invest 5 Chou YEN (YEN 5000 Billion = US$ 45 Billion) over 6 years (2005-2010), i.e. about US$ 7.5 Billion/year. 60% of this investment will be for optical IP networks. NTT plans to build about 30 million FTTH lines.
read more here in our report on Japan’s telecom sector…
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According to newsreports, Japan’s ruling coalition decided on a draft law, which will make identification requirements for obtaining prepaid phones more strict, instead of totally outlawing prepaid phones. It is reported that according to this bill the transfer of mobile phones to third parties would become a punishable offence. So if this bill becomes law, you risk a prison sentence if you lend your prepaid mobile phone to others in Japan – be warned.
For detailed statistics on size, market shares and analysis of Japan’s prepaid phone market, consult the latest edition of our report on Japan’s telecom sector.
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by Gerhard Fasol
Businessweek Editor David Rocks came three weeks to Japan to report on Japan’s telecommunications and technology sectors, arrived Friday and took me for dinner Friday night. A few days later David Rocks called me during my lunch break and asked me: “if you would meet Masayoshi Son, what would you ask him?” Turned out David was going to interview SoftBank Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son a about an hour later. I proposed three questions. Later David Rocks called me back, and told me Masayoshi Son’s answers, which are enclosed here as well.
Masayoshi Son’s answer (as told to me by David Rocks): Yes, these rumors are true, however I did not take any fuel along with me inside the Ministry
David Rocks used my proposed question to Masayoshi Son for the title of his article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2004-10-31/setting-fire-to-the-cell-phone-market
Masayoshi Son’s answer (as told to me by David Rocks): No plans for Europe at this time.
Masayoshi Son’s answer (as told to me by David Rocks): We have sufficient finance to grow SoftBank’s business.
The headline of David Rock’s article “Setting fire to the cell-phone market”, published on October 31, 2004 in Businessweek is based on my first question. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2004-10-31/setting-fire-to-the-cell-phone-market
The photograph of Masayoshi Son is used under Creative Commons license according to Wikipedia.
Copyright details are:
Description English: Masayoshi Son on July 11, 2008
Date 11 July 2008, 12:11:02
Source iPhone 3G Masayoshi Son Masaru Kamikura (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamikura/2658524938/)
Author Masaru Kamikura (http://www.flickr.com/people/20119192@N00) from Japan
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en) license.
Copyright (c) 2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
The government coalition in Japan is preparing a law to outlaw prepaid mobile phones. The reason given is that too many prepaid phones are used for crimes, e.g. the “ore ore” fraud.
The number of prepaid phones in Japan is very small, but it’s not equally distributed. DoCoMo has almost no prepaid users, and has announced to abolish this service. Vodafone has about 10% prepaid users, and TuKa about 20% – so these will suffer when prepaid phones are outlawed.
Update: on 12 November 2004 the ruling coalition decided on a draft law, which will not outlaw prepaid mobile phones, but will make identification requirements more strict. (See update above)
Find an updated market analysis with statistics of Japan’s prepay mobile market in our report on Japan’s telecoms industry sector
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The SonyEricsson mobile phone design team gave a very impressive presentation of their work at the Swedish Embassy yesterday.
Here is Art Director Mr Kawagoi, who created the famous SonyEricsson logo, explaining the messages contained in his creation:
Here Swedish Managers of the SonyEricsson Creative Design Center from Lund/Sweden:
My conclusion: expect a lot more great designs out of SonyEricsson. Also, there is every indication it’s a very successful Japan-Swedish cooperation.
[images in this post are taken with a DoCoMo/Sharp SH900i 3G/FOMA camera-phone in 2Megapixel setting, and sent through the air via DoCoMo’s FOMA network. Images are reproduced here in much less than the original 1224 x 1632 pixel size, which would not fit on most PC screens.]
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
Completed version 8 of the “i-Mode Report” (260 pages, 45 figures, 120 photographs, and 25 tables)
Main changes and additions:
updated most statistics and graphs
added a section on mobile games on i-mode
updated the international section
updated the 3G section
updated the i-mode-FeliCa wallet-phone section
corrected many errors
updated the section on Japan’s telecom landscape: added recent transactions, and updated graphics
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There is a saying the that the Prophet is not recognized within his/her own country – and I think that the inventor of Karaoke, Inoue Daisuke (井上 大佑) is not as famous in his own country as he deserves – but he was now recognized for his outstanding invention by the “Ig Nobel Prize” committee in the PEACE category.
This years Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on September 30, 2004 to Inoue Daisuke, for inventing karaoke, thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other.
“Karaoke” means “empty orchestra” (KARAOKE = KARA (= empty) + OrKEstra).
The Ig Nobel Peace Prize is one of the IG Nobel Prizes, awarded annually by the Journal “Annals of Improbable Research” at MIT.
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
An article in The Economist about Vodafone is partly based on our analysis:
Vodafone not so big in Japan: “Vodafone- Not so big in Japan” (The Economist, Sept 30th, 2004)
pdf file, approx 120 pages, 47 figures 18 photos, 7 tables
Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
Prepaid mobile phones are a huge business in Europe.
In Japan prepaid mobile phone numbers are tiny, and NTT’s new CEO just announced that NTT-DoCoMo is planning to stop offering prepaid mobile phones altogether.
Find detailed statistics and market shares per operator for Japan’s prepaid market in our report on Japan’s telecommunications sector.
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Cable & Wireless Japan: Today’s top article in Nikkei is about Cable and Wireless-Japan: the article reports that Cable and Wireless is in discussion with Softbank and a private equity firm to sell their Japan operations. Apparently this news article is not confirmed, and it already mentions a purchase prize on the order of US$ 100 million. This article appeared in the top position in Nikkei – but there are several things a bit mysterious about it.
I did not follow Cable and Wireless recently in Japan, but it seems that C&W made a loss of YEN 61.6 OKU on sales of YEN 713 OKU, i.e. almost 10% loss.
Since we are insiders in Japan’s telecom sector, we know most of the details. To out it into short words, Cable & Wireless did not have the knowhow to manage a Japanese company. They tried but failed, and alienated a lot of people.
Spent all morning discussing with one of the innovation managers of a big European telco. Interesting. Spent afternoon with a US bio-tech company which which is thinking of asking us to build their business in Japan, and in the evening listened to a talk by Tadashi Onodera, the CEO of KDDI. Expected him to talk mainly about mobile – but he did not. His focus was a national VOIP network they are building, attacking the fixed line income of NTT. Got hold of him after his talk and discussed with him for about 10 minutes.
UPDATE: on October 26, 2004, Softbank announced the acquisition of Cable & Wireless IDC. Total cost of the acquistion is announced as YEN 12.3 billion (= US$ 110 million)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
by Gerhard Fasol
The annual “Tokyo Game Show” sets trends and is a must for game professionals and fans. More than 100 companies exhibit.
This years highlight is the SONY “PlayStation Portable” – PSP – to be introduced towards the end of 2004. SONY prepared a huge arena with an gigantic models of a PSP hanging overhead where visitors to the show could try out advance models of the PSP.
SONY also displayed the new “Gran Turismo 4” game, the release is scheduled for Dec 3, 2004. “Gran Turismo 4” was not the only car racing game at the show, we counted at least three more in this hugely popular category.
Japan game market report (398 pages, pdf-file):
The DoCoMo pavillion highlighted 15 of the most important i-Mode game partners. These 15 were selected from over 4000 i-mode content partners. Games are one of the most important sectors on the i-mode menu – many customers are driven by games to buy the next handset upgrade. Therefore DoCoMo has a great interest in mobile games. DoCoMos focus at the game show were games for the 900i FOMA/3G series.
In a stunning arena around a gigantic hyper-real model of the PSP PlayStation Portable (PSP), visitors try out the PSP. PSP is announced to be released towards the end of 2004.
SONY offered a preview of “Gran Turismo 4” representing the enormously popular segmet of car racing games with realistic landscapes and surroundings.
DoCoMo presented an intense show of 15 key i-mode partners focusing on games. The map immediately below shows the lay-out of DoCoMos exhibition area, together with small pictures of the main display of each of the 15 DoCoMo partners
One of the most important DoCoMo game partners is Square Enix with the best selling Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy is a “role playing game” where the player joins a group of fighters. This photograph shows the Square Enix presentation in the DoCoMo display. Square Enix also had its own presentation area – complete with models, preview area, shows etc.
“Rumble rose” is the most spectacular representative game of sexy games – Rumble Rose is about women wrestling…
ATLUS shows stunning color and illumination effects.
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It’s tempting to compare iTunes and Chaku-Uta statistics to get a feel for the meaning of the Motorola-iTunes deal. Here we go:
More about Japanese telecom sector and mobile in Japan: Eurotechnology Japan report on Japan’s telecom sector
More about Mobile Music in Japan: “Mobile-Music” report
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
Global mobile phone ring tone market (source: Consect LLC, WSJ) in 2004:
W Europe: US$ 1.5 billion (37.5%)
Japan: US$ 1.0 billion (24.0%)
Korea: US$ 0.5 billion (12.5%)
US: US$ 0.3 billion (7.5%)
ROW: US$ 0.7 billion (17.5%)
———————————
Total: US$ 4.0 billion (100%)
see: “Mobile Music in Japan” (report, pdf file)
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
The mobile phone subscriber statistics for August 2004 in Japan came out:
3G subscribers:
KDDI/AU: 15,511,800 subscribers, conversion rate to 3G: 86.1%
DoCoMo: 5,900,200 subscribers, conversion rate to 3G: 12.6%
Vodafone: 237,600 subscribers, conversion rate to 3G: 1.6%
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
80% of KDDI/AU users are now converted to 3G, and KDDI/AU does not sell any 2G phones any more: only 3G and 3.5G (2.4Mbps data download).
Here is KDDI/AU‘s newest 3.5G phone – the W21SA, for 2.4Mbps data download:
More about Japan’s mobile telecom sector:Eurotechnology Japan report on Japan’s telecom industry
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
Just read an article in the Economist:
“Mobile 3G telecoms: Vision, meet reality”
which quotes ITU’s 2000 vision for 3G (ITU = International Telecommunication Union):
The device will function as a phone, a computer, a television, a pager, a videoconferencing centre, a newspaper, a diary and even a credit card…it will support not only voice communications but also real-time video and full-scale multimedia. It will automatically search the internet for relevant news and information on pre-selected subjects, book your next holiday for you online and download a bedtime story for your child, complete with moving pictures. It will even be able to pay for goods when you shop via wireless electronic funds transfer. In short, the new mobile handset will become the single, indispensable “life tool”, carried everywhere by everyone, just like a wallet or purse is today.
Interestingly, every single detail of ITU’s 2000 3G-vision has now been realized now by DoCoMo in Japan.
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
by Gerhard Fasol
Every year the Wireless Japan sets global trends in wireless communications and mobile phones. Mobile phone industry professionals cannot afford to miss this trend setting show. It is here that Japanese carriers and handset makers introduce their latest products and show design studies and concept phones which set industry trends for the next months and years.
There were some surprises: In recent Wireless-Japan shows usually the KDDI/AU-design project prototypes were at the center of attention – this year I could not find any. For example, at Wireless-Japan-2002, KDDI/AU showed “Infobar” prototypes a full 16 months before market introduction. Did KDDI/AU decide to keep future design-project releases secret until they hit the market? Could well be so, given Japan’s increasingly ferocious mobile phone competition. Another surprise was Vodafone’s absence – Vodafone in recent years used to have the biggest show.
On the other hand this time most handset makers showed impressive concept phones, Matsushita/Panasonic under the heading “Beyond 3G”. The image shows NEC’s concept design study of a flexible multimedia phone: this phone has two screens which can be bent together, and used jointly as a larger screen.
Beyond 3G: SANYO 3.5G phone for 2.4Mbps data download (for KDDI/AU):
“Wireless Japan 2004” – much was expected: for example, it wasn’t surprising for anyone that DoCoMo’s i-Mode-FeliCa wallet-phones were center stage of the DoCoMo exhibit with lots of partners demoing wallet-phone applications.
DoCoMo i-Mode-FeliCa wallet phones – for electronic cash:
We have substantial documentation about the Wireless Japan 2004 exhibition, and most other year’s Wireless Japan exhibitions. If you need information or documentation for prior art or other investigations, please contact us.
Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
Presentation by Gerhard Fasol at First Tuesday Zurich (5 May 2004, 15:15 – 21:30, Swiss Stock Exchange, Zurich, Switzerland)
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
“Creating a Mission Statement for a Top Ranking Japanese Engineering University and Suggestions for its Realization”
Presentation by Gerhard Fasol at the “International Symposium on Building Global Excellence in Engineering Education”
“International Symposium on Building Global Excellence in Engineering Education”
Japanese program
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, September 3rd, 2003: 11:50-12:35
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
by Gerhard Fasol
Copyright 1997-2013 Eurotechnology Japan KK All Rights Reserved
Presentation at the German Embassy, Tokyo
(12 June 2003, 18:30, Residence of HE The Ambassador of Germany, Tokyo)
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
Contributed to an article “Unleashing R&D in Japan” by Jean-François Tremblay for the Chemical & Engineering News (Volume 80, Number 49, pp 13-15, December 9, 2002)
Fasol mentions that there is excellent science in Japan, for example Shuji Nakamura’s invention and development of blue and white GaN based LEDs and Lasers (see: Nakamura and Fasol: the Blue Laser Diode).
Fasol also mentions the necessary transition from “old Japan” to “new Japan”. “Old Japan” is run by a tightly knit group of older men, without space for women or foreigners. Shuji Nakamura escaped this “Old Japan” for Santa Barbara in California.
Japan needs to transition as soon as possible from an “old Japanese men” controlled society, to a Japan that embraces diversity, engaging the power of women and people with different backgrounds and ideas, not just inbreeding by old men from the same schools of thought.
Fasol also mentions that Japan has excellent human resources, and foreign companies can today take advantage of opportunities in Japan, which did not exist, or were unaccessible for foreign companies 50 years ago.
When Fasol was Faculty at Tokyo University, Faculty essentially did not register almost any inventions for patents, and there were essentially no companies started at Japan’s No. 1 Elite University. To stimulate innovation and growth is it necessary to change the mind-set at Japan’s elite Universities, encourage commercialization of inventions through spin-out companies.
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Briefing about Japan’s high-technology business sector for Mme Nicole Fontaine, Vice-Minister for Industry of France
Tokyo, Friday, September 20, 2002, at the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan.
Copyright·©1997-2013 ·Eurotechnology Japan KK·All Rights Reserved·
by Gerhard Fasol
The annual Wireless-Japan exhibition highlights the trends of mobile communications in Japan. At Wireless-Japan 2002 KDDI started setting the trend of concept phones.
And here are two images of the bestselling “INFOBAR”-phone in the version sold by KDDI.
Design study by AU/KDDI for future mobile handsets. This design study was the basis for the PENCK model sold by KDDI/AU at a later date.
Big Blue Vending machine for mobile internet usage by IBM
starting a trend to mobile TV…
Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) linked to mobile phones by DoCoMo
gradually DoCoMo is introducing payment applications to mobile phones. In 2004, two years later, DoCoMo introduces the walletphone.
Karaoke Machine linked to mobile phones by DoCoMo
FOMA video telephone and MOPPET fixed line video telephony terminal, allows video conversation between FOMA mobile phone and fixed line telephone.
More information about 3G in Japan and FOMA: www.eurotechnology.com/3G/.
SH2101V handheld PC and video camera for FOMA (3G) use, including video camera
We have substantial documentation about the Wireless Japan 2002 exhibition, and most other year’s Wireless Japan exhibitions. If you need information or documentation for prior art or other investigations, please contact us.
Learn more: report on Japan’s telecom sector (269 pages, pdf file):
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