Japan game market disruption: new smartphone game companies overtake Japan’s game icons like Nintendo in income [日本語版はこちらへ] Since last financial year (ended March 31, 2013), three newcomers (GungHo, DeNA, and GREE) combined achieved higher operating income and higher net income than all 9 iconic Japanese game companies (Nintendo + SONY-Games + SegaSammy + BandaiNamco + […]
Category Archives: telecommunications
Japan game sector disruption
Japan’s iconic game companies (Nintendo, Sony, Sega-Sammy, Bandai-Namco, Konami, Takara-Tomy, Square-Enix, Capcom, Tecmo-Koei) see brutal disruption by smart phone games Japan game sector disruption: Three newcomers (GREE, DeNA and GungHo) achieve higher operating income than all top 9 incumbent game companies combined Japan’s top 9 iconic game companies, Nintendo, Sony, Sega-Sammy, Bandai-Namco, Konami, Takara-Tomy, Square-Enix, […]
Masayoshi Son threatened to set himself on fire in Japan’s Postal Ministry?!
Masayoshi Son threatened to set himself on fire in Japan’s Post and Telecommunications Ministry? Is it really true? by Gerhard Fasol Masayoshi Son is known for his unbreakable will to achieve his and his companies’ business goals, and the will to take risks. Masayoshi Son threatened to set himself on fire in the Ministry?!? Spectrum […]
FTTH Japan Europe: more FTTH broadband subscriptions in Japan than in all of EU + Norway + Switzerland + Iceland
Japan has more broadband fixed internet subscriptions than all of the European Union + Switzerland + Norway + Iceland FTTH Japan Europe:While Japan initially was late in waking up to the commercial introduction of the Internet – Japan was fast to catch up and overtake Japan alone currently has about 30% more FTTH optical fiber […]
Growth in Japan: the SoftBank group
SoftBank gaining market share in Japan SoftBank market cap catching up with Docomo Mobile subscription data released last week show, that the SoftBank group continues to gain market share while incumbent NTT-docomo continues to lose market share – an upward trend for SoftBank, and a downward trend for NTT-docomo essentially unbroken since SoftBank acquired Vodafone-Japan […]
Masayoshi Son: “I am a man – and I want to be Number 1”
SoftBank aims for global No. 1 position…acquiring SPRINT on the way to the top SoftBank: towards global No. 1 with a 300 year vision To understand SoftBank, and the planned SPRINT acquisition, you need to understand Masayoshi Son – and Masayoshi Son says: “I am a man – and I want to be Number 1”. […]
Japan telecom sector financial results and the Softbank-Sprint take-over battle
SoftBank seeks to win, where Docomo failed – taking Japan’s telecoms know-how global Japan telecom sector financial results: very very healthy With SoftBank and DISH battling for US mobile operator SPRINT, the eyes are on Japan’s very healthy mobile phone sector, which a few days ago announced financial results for FY 2012. Japan’s mobile operators […]
Japan wireless industry boom driven by smartphones. Japan adds about two Finlands worth of wireless subscriptions per year.
Japan wireless industry adds 11 million subscriptions/year currently Softbank targets ¥ 1 Trillion operational income Japan wireless industry is growing, and Japan’s mobile operators add 11 million subscriptions/year currently: Japan adds about two Finlands worth of wireless subscriptions per year. Softbank entered the telecom arena in 2001 with Yahoo BB, Nagoya Metallic and later Osaka […]
Japan trends for 2013 (New Year post)
Japan replaced nuclear electricity generation by LNG, by imported gas Japan trends for 2013: Nuclear reactor restarts are on their way Japan trends for 2013 Japan’s energy sector: Japan has essentially replaced the 30% of its electricity energy supply which was from nuclear power plants, by electricity produced in aging thermal power plants from urgently […]
Japan trends for 2013 (Christmas, Festive Season blog)
Japan trends for 2013: Energy crisis continues as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster Renewables: Japan’s feed in tariffs are among the world’s highest Japan trends for 2013: Japan’s energy sector: Prime-Minister Abe announced that he will review the Fukushima nuclear accident before taking decisions on nuclear power, essentially postponing the nuclear issue. Japan’s […]
Apple-Samsung Patent War and Impact on Japans Industries (talk at Foreign Correspondents Club Tokyo on Oct 2, 2012)
PROFESSIONAL LUNCHEON “Apple-Samsung Patent War and Impact on Japans Industries” Speaker: Gerhard Fasol Tuesday, October 2, 2012 12:00-13:30 Foreign Correspondents Club Japan (FCCJ), Yurakucho Outline: In a global war to dominate the smartphone market, Samsung and Apple have been at each other’s throats, playing out the war in courts around the world and accusing each […]
Mobile payments: 10 years to reinvent the wheel?
Mobile payments for train travel was demonstrated in Tokyo in 2003, but has not reached London yet Mobile payments: Tokyo (mobile SUICA) vs. London (OYSTER) Mobile payments are big: Reuters estimates that the mobile payment market will be about US$ 1000 Billion by 2016, and in Japan just a single railway line achieves already now […]
How to turn Galapagos into a competitive advantage in both directions
Positive and negative aspects of Japan’s Galapagos issues European Institute of Japanese Studies Academy Seminars presents Speaker: Dr. Gerhard Fasol, President, Eurotechnology Japan K.K. Wednesday, June 13, 2012, 18:30 – 21:00 Embassy of Sweden, Alfred Nobel Auditorium Stockholm School of Economics, European Institute of Japanese Studies About the talk: In the last 20 years, several […]
Disaster communication. Lessons from the Tohoku disaster
Communications save lives during disasters Disaster communication: keynote at the 7th KCC Korea Communications Conference, Seoul Communications save lives during disasters, and are essential for survival, for “situational awareness” (= to know what is going on), for decision making, and business continuity. Nobody likes to experience a disaster, but when disaster strikes there is no […]
Post-Galapagos Japan? – globalizing Japan’s fantastic technologies…
Japan Galapagos effect: “Why do Japanese companies make so beautiful mobile phones with fantastic functions, and have almost no global market share?” I asked this question back in 2003 to NTT-DoCoMo’s CEO Dr. Tachikawa (see my article “Leadership questions of the week” in Wallstreet Journal of June 12, 2006, page 31), and offered several proposals […]
Will cash become obsolete?
Gave presentation to the Telecommunications Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) on October 7, 2009, entitled “Will cash become obsolete? E-money, mobile payments and mobile commerce”. Talk was attended by about 30-40 executives from major global telecom operators, global banks, new-age payment companies, and from major internet companies. Outline: What is […]
Evolution of TV and social TV (Keynotes at BCWW2009 Global Media Forum, Seoul, Korea Sept. 10, 2009)
Two keynotes on “Evolution of TV” and “Social TV” and chaired session at BCWW2009 Global Media Forum, Seoul, Korea, September 10, 2009
When did qr-codes start on mobile phones? (in August 2002)
qr-codes were developed by Toyota subsidiary denso-wave When did qr-codes start on mobile phones: First mobile phone with qr-code reader was the J-SH09 by SHARP for Japanese mobile operator J-Phone When did qr-codes for mobile phones start in Japan? Here is the answer: the first mobile phone with qr-code reader was the J-SH09 produced by […]
M-payments and e-money grow exponentially
1 Billion e-money transactions/month around 2014 Exponential growth: The number of e-cash payments per month increases by a factor of 10 about every 4 years E-money transactions (including mobile e-cash) grow exponentially in Japan, and we expect to see 1 Billion e-money transactions/month around 2014 (this figure would be much bigger if contactless train travel […]
10 years e-cash and mobile payments
Mobile phone payments with RFID start in Japan in 2003 i-Mode mobile payments started in Japan in 1999 10 years ago – 1999 – the global mobile payment revolution started in Japan: with i-mode introducing an essentially Japan-only highly successful micropayment system for online content and brick-and-mortar based m-commerce, and SONY’s Edy starting e-cash experiments […]