Six years into the wireless internet revolution which started February 1999 in Japan
Docomo’s and KDDI’s latest wireless innovation, concept mobile phones, mobile payments
Wireless Japan 2005 marks six years of mobile internet in Japan, which started February 1999 in Tokyo. Now in the sixth year, wireless internet, i-Mode and EZweb and J-Sky are maturing, mobile payment solutions are being introduced.
Some highlights:
- VOIP – 3G
- fixed line – wLAN integration
- first push-to-talk (PTT) appearance in Japan – will PTT arrive in Japan?
- KDDI joined DoCoMo’s mobile FeliCa camp, and demos first EZ-FeliCa handsets and mobile SUICA
- new 3G-entrant e-Mobile shows it’s flag
- PHS-carrier Willcom from strength to strength
- Vodafone again absent – focuses on turn-round
Wireless Japan 2005: Mobile FeliCa wallet phones and mobile payment
KDDI has timed it’s entry to DoCoMo’s mobile FeliCa camp to coincide with the time, when the railway nearfield payment card SUICA with 10 million users will join the mobile FeliCa system. KDDI demonstrated the first EZ-FeliCa phones:
DoCoMo is expanding the penetration for mobile FeliCa, demonstrating “TownPocket”: TownPocket is a FeliCa terminal, where users can link their phones via the FeliCa reader/writer interface to pick up local information. Possibilities are to bookmark automatically the URL of a shop or a sightseeing spot, or to send or receive an email with local information.
Popularity of DoCoMo’s 901iS series accelerates DoCoMo’s transition to 3G.
With mobile phones quickly becoming pocket sized music centers in competition to iPod’s but in much larger numbers, battery life is a problem. Fuel cells give hope for longer life till the next recharge. As you can see in the picture, the prototype fuel cells are still too large for daily use:
Hitachi shows a prototype future generation phone with:
- ultra-3G
- digital terrestrial TV tuner
- hard disk
- fuel cell
also shown is the recharge for the fuel-cell:
Futuristic concept phones are a tradition at the Wireless Japan show. The following images show multi-media concept phones:
This flask-stile multimedia presenter shows images on flake-like suspended displays. Presentation of particular images helps to create the mood of the moment:
Media phone:
Digital rights management (DRM) concept study. Digital rights are sold in the style of wrapped sweets, and can be played or eaten. Dropping a digital-right-sweet into the receptacle plays the music or the video corresponding to this right. The sweets/DRMs can be eaten up after their value has been used up:
e-Mobile is preparing for it’s debut in Japan’s mobile phone market, most likely from 2006 or 2007. While new mobile entrant Softbank was not at the Wireless Japan show, e-Mobile had a massive prototype and concept presentation.
e-Mobile showed a range of concepts for the services being developed with partners Fujitsu and Lucent. Good phones and solid concepts, but nothing surprising yet at this stage.
KDDI
KDDI had a very large impressive show of AU’s range of mobile phones, business software applications, it’s range of mobile portals including comics, books, auctions, music and shopping, and EZ-FelIca’s debut as shown higher up. An attraction was a robot display, the robot is controled via blue-tooth by mobile phone:
We have substantial documentation about the Wireless Japan 2005 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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