Voice recognition simplifies access to mobile blogs

Credit: CNET Japan
Voice Domain Service (VDS), a subsidiary of Advanced Media, announced a voice recognition service for mobile handsets. Dubbed as “Voice Domain Blog Service”, the new service will help users connect to the desired blogs from a cellphone through the voice commands. Blog owners must register their blogs’ names with VDS in order to be recognized when users shout the blog’s name into the speaker.

Business model

• Free of charge for cellphone users (users pay for the connection time)
• Blog owners to pay 19,600 yen ($167) for the registration and annual service
• First 1,000 registered will pay half – 9,800 yen ($83)
• From the second year the service fee goes down to 9,800 yen per year

The company hopes to sign up 2,000 blogs by March 2006 and to increase that number up to 25,000 before March 2008.

Value

The main idea behind this service is to simplify the access to blogs from cellphones by saving user’s efforts and time to type hard-to-remember URLs. For blog owners, the service brings a new way to be discovered by users in an innovative way.

Marketers will welcome the service as it allows them to use catchy phrases to promote products and services. Indeed, a blog can be created to promote a special event or to advertise a new product. Advertisers will need just to let customers know the phrase they need to say into the speaker in order to get a link to the promotional webpage from a cell phone. However, I still find the access method to this service cumbersome.

Access method from a regular cellphone:

1. Access vd-s.jp site
2. Select Voice Domain Search link to initiate a call to the server
3. Yell into speaker the desired blog’s name
4. Select search results link to view the found links
5. Select link to visit the desired blog

Access method from Symbian OS smartphones:

1. Start the launcher application
2. Yell into speaker the desired blog’s name
3. The launcher application will send the digitized command to the server and receive the search results
4. Select the desired link to launch browser to visit the blog

Music phone from NEC holds up to 1,000 songs

In Japan, Vodafone prepares for the spring launch of the 804N, a music phone from NEC. The 804N will be the first model manufactured by NEC for Vodafone with a dual WCDMA/ GSM 900/1800/1900 bands support. GSM support means you can take this phone abroad and use it with the Vodafone service over there.

But the main feature of this phone is its remarkable storage capacity – 450MB of internal memory plus up to 512MB of expandable memory (microSD card slot). All this memory is needed for music playback (non-secure AAC and secure MP3 file formats). The handset has dedicated buttons to play, fast-forward, and rewind music. The retail price with the carrier’s subsidies is expected to be around 15,000 yen ($127).

Here are some additional specs of this phone:

• Size: 48mm x 93mm x 23mm
• Weight: 115g
• Main display: 2.2 inch QVGA screen
• Talk time: 180 minutes (WCDMA)/ 260 minutes (GSM)
• Stand by time: over 250 hours
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB
• Camera: 2.0MP CMOS
• Applications: V Appli (Mega Appli)/ QR-code scanner/ Chaku Uta Full/ Vodafone Live! CAST/ TV Call/ Vodafone Live! BB

Japan: cellphone stock trading rakes in billions of value

Business Week says cellphones played an important role in Japan's recent "three-day sell-off, which had dragged the Nikkei index down 7% by Jan. 18 and strained the Tokyo Stock Exchange's trading system to the breaking point." How? Well, apparently thousands of amateur Japanese investors panicked on the stock news and immediately took their cellphones to "shed shares as fast as the professional brokerage traders." It turns out that stock trading via cell phones is getting very popular among ordinary investors in Japan, bringing billions in value of transactions.

In November, the value of trades made via mobile phones by brokers Matsui Securities, E*Trade Securities, and Monex -- three of Japan's major online brokers -- hit 1 trillion yen ($8.7 billion) for the first time, a rise of 90% over the year before.

Once again, the example of cellphone trading proves the point that mobile Internet has more appeal to Japanese than the fixed-line connection.

Why is wireless becoming the way to go for Japan's market junkies in Japan? Much of the answer lies in the way the country's mobile industry evolved in the 1990s. Back then, pricey per-minute charges over regular phone lines discouraged consumers from getting Internet access at home. Many Japanese simply found it cheaper to sign up for Web-enabled cell phones instead, which had an added benefit for city dwellers who spend an average of two hours daily commuting to and from work.

Vodafone probes Japan's market with 2G phone

Believe it or not, but they still release 2G phones in Japan. This time, Vodafone together with Toshiba presented the V502T model, first phone from Vodafone's spring line-up. Retailed at 12,090 yen ($103), the V502T spots a 2.4 inch QVGA display and has only 20mm in width.

The phone is being targeted at first-time users that require a user-friendly interface and a simple operation. To meet these requirements Vodafone incorporated into the phone a ‘Simple Mode 3’ feature. According to Vodafone,

"Simple Mode 3 displays frequently used functions such as voice call, mail and camera in large fonts, making the V502T easy-to-use for both beginners and mature customers. It is also equipped with ‘Limit Mode’, which lets customers control when calls are made, usage volumes and outgoing or incoming numbers to prevent overuse, making the V502T suitable for children."

Here are some additional specs of this phone:

• Size: 51mm x 103mm x 20mm
• Weigth: 119g
• Talk time: 120 minutes
• Stand by time: 380 hours
• 1.3MP camera
• Extension slot: miniSD
• Applications: V Appli ver.2 (256Kb)/ QR-code scanner/ Chaku Uta

Vodafone's V502T product page

KDDI posts 300m downloads of polyphonic ringtones

In January 23, KDDI reached another milestone in ringtone downloads. The company announced 300 million downloads of Chaku Uta, a Japanese name for polyphonic ringtones.

Having started the Chaku Uta distribution in December 2002, KDDI saw the service gaining in popularity. It seems that the recent trend of full song downloads onto mobile phones did not impact the downloads of polyphonic ringtones in Japan. It took the company only nine months to go from 200 million Chaku Uta downloads in Aprill 2005 to 300 million in January 2006.

KDDI au brand also provides Chaku Uta Full, a full song download service for cellphones, from November 2004. The service proved to be popular among KDDI customers, claiming 2 million downloads in just two months after the rollout.

E-books find popularity among mobile handset users

If a couple of years ago PCs and PDAs were the primary targets of e-book content, now it is the handsets that start grabbing a bigger share. The market research company mReport found out that, in Japan, the flat-rate data plans encouraged mobile users to download more e-books onto their handsets.

KDDI au was quick to recognize this trend by establishing “EZ Book Land!” -- a mobile e-book portal -- in April 2005. KDDI subscribers can browse the library of e-books (EZ books in KDDI’s slang) within the portal and download at no charge the snippets of ones they liked. If they wish to purchase the actual book, it is easy to place an order via a cell phone. According to KDDI, there were 5.5 million of e-book snippets downloaded from the EZ Book Land! portal as of September 2005. What a great promotional tool for new books releases!

In the US, mobile phones are just starting to gain some recognition as a marketing channel for books. This week, Stephen King’s new horror novel Cell will be promoted through mobile phones. The marketing campaign will include the sale of two “talk-tones” by Mr. King. Cover art from the novel will also be for sale as cell phone wallpaper.

Source: Japan.Internet.com

Four reasons for high mobile data usage uptake in Japan

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had this lengthy article (note: subscription required) about mobile marketing in Asia. The article pointed out to some cultural differences between West and East that should be well taken into marketers' minds when replicating Japanese mobile marketing campaigns. In a nutshell, the following are key drivers that led to the high uptake of mobile data usage in Japan and that can’t be applied in North America:

• Lack of alternative communication means at home led to the heavy data usage of cellphones for Internet surfing and email. As WSJ put it, “Cellphones were adopted early on in Japan by girls living in cramped households, because they lacked other private communication, such as personal telephones and Internet access”.
• While people in Japan don't mind thumb-typing text messages, that might not be the case with users in North America.
• Japan led Asia's phone-text revolution, largely because of taboo against talking on phones in public there.
• From myself, I’d like to mention another well-known fact that Japan is a heavy train-commuter nation versus car-commuter of North America. During the commute time, Japanese keep themselves occupied with texting, playing games and surfing the Internet via their cellphones, while Americans prefer to drive cars, limiting themselves to voice calling or listening to the radio while driving.

Handset subsidies in Japan

Number portability will be introduced in Japan this fall. Before that change happens, some operators are frantically trying to build up a user-base by offering more commissions to retailers and subsidizing handsets to a greater extent.

However, KDDI au chose not to go that way. The company is not planning to increase the subsidies it pays to handset makers, because it is already paying one of the highest commissions. Instead, KDDI is confident that its new price plans and services will keep users from churning.

Bloomberg provided an insight on how much of subsidies are paid by big carriers in Japan:

• KDDI pays about 38,000 yen (USD330) to retailers for every handset sold (the company expects total costs of handset subsidies to climb 2.9% to 457bn yen (USD3.979bn) this fiscal year (2005) “as phone sales may go up by 510,000 units to 12.1m”).
• DoCoMo raised its forecast for subsidies paid to retailers per handset by 1,000 yen to 35,000 yen (USD305) in October 2005.
• Vodafone also raised commissions but refused to provide figures.

DoCoMo rethinks its strategy

Business Week (BW) published quite an informative article about DoCoMo's business strategy, which includes new acquisitions in Japan and abroad. This time the company looks closely at its neighboorhood markets in Asia. But don't expect DoCoMo to go on a shopping spree as it used to do in the past. DoCoMo says it is limiting most new ventures in Asia to less than $90 million a piece.

DoCoMo's domestic activity is focused on growing musclues in non-wireless business areas with a goal to link them with the wireless model. The recent acquisitions include a controlling 34% stake in Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's credit-card business, a 40% stake in Tower Records Japan, and a 2.6% piece of Fuji TV.

Commenting on i-mode, BW provided an interesting data on i-mode's spread between Japan and the rest of the world:

"But even i-mode, a runaway success in Japan since it was introduced in 1999, has struggled abroad. DoCoMo now licenses its i-mode technology to 22 countries from Spain to Singapore, but 84% of i-mode users worldwide are in Japan. Hirata (DoCoMo's Senior Executive VP) says i-mode brings in well under 10% of overall revenues. "We don't really expect it to be a huge profit maker," he says. "We're more after the cost benefits from having economies of scale for i-mode-enabled handsets."

It is not a surprise for me that i-mode has difficulties abroad. Here, in the US, AT&T Wireless was closely working with DoCoMo to roll out mMode, an American version of i-mode, before AT&TW was bought out by Cingular. When rolled out, mMode was very impressive from the technical and design point of view, but the pricing was expensive and the revenue distribution model varied greatly from DoCoMo's. While DoCoMo splits revenues by keeping 10% and giving the rest of 90% to content developers, AT&TW was taking 40% of revenues, leaving developers with the rest. As you can imagine, the mMode uptake was not significant and it seems Cingular is phasing out or rebranding most of the mMode's platform.

Prosolid vs. Razr V3: the thinnest phones compared

Here we have them, Panasonic Prosolid and Motorala Razr, the thinnest handsets in the world, released almost simultaneously (the Razr by Cingular in November 2004 and Prosolid by DoCoMo in December 2004), but so different in their fate. While the Razr rocked the world, becoming one of the best selling handset in many countries, the Prosolid went almost unnoticed, making few splashes. Why? Well, partially, I can admit that the Razr may have a cooler look, but the main reason of such different outcomes is in another area. It is simple - Panasonic lacks the marketing, sales and distribution muscle of Motorola. It is not the exclusive problem of Panasonic, but this is the issue all domestic handset makers in Japan should address. While possessing technical expertise and creativity, Japanese companies often fail to go internationally, because they don't have enough qualified personnel or experience in dealing with foreign operators.

Prosolid Specs:

• Form Factor: Clamshell
• Finish: Anodized Aluminum magnezium
• Internal Memory:
• Dimensions (h x w x d): 108 x 48 x 16.7 mm
• Size (cc):
• Weight: 98 g
• Internal Display: 2.2 inches, 132 x 176 pixel, up to 65,536 TFT Color
• External Display: 0.8 inches, 25 x 96 pixel

Razr V3 Specs:

• Form Factor: Clamshell
• Finish: Anodized Aluminum
• Internal Memory: 5MB
• Color: Silver
• Dimensions (h x w x d): 98 x 53 x 14 mm
• Size (cc): 65
• Weight: 97g
• Internal Display: 176 x 220 pixel, up to 260K TFT Color, with 9 Lines of Text
• External Display: 96 x 80 pixel, 4k CSN Color, 4 Lines of Text / Line of Icons

Does Japan's handset market need consolidation?

With the announced plans of foreign manufacturers to enter Japan's market with 3G handset terminals, the prospects of domestic handset manufacturers look gloom.

First of all, the market is overcrowded with about ten manufacturers, competing with each other and trying to court three national operators. If you look at the chart above, you will see than neither of cellphone makers has a distinctive lead over others. Not mentioned in the chart, but constituted the Other category are Casio, Kyocera, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi. For the market size of 90 million subscribers (Japan's cellular subscriber base at the end of 2005), that's a lot of handset contenders. For the top five makers, who secured deals with big players such as NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, the future is not so worrisome, but the rest of the pack faces difficult choices. Actually, there are two clear choices: either to go internationally or to stop production. Well, the first option requires significant investments and the Japanese consumer electronic makers, each of whom owns a handset unit, go through some difficult times right now. They would rather to cut costs by downsizing or spinning out their unprofitable handset units. Anyway, the number of domestic handset makers will certainly decrease over the next two or three years.

Japan ends 2005 with more than 90 million handset users

According to the Telecommunications Carriers Association (TCA), in 2005 Japan's total cellular user base grew 0.6% on a yearly base, reaching 90.2 million subscribers.

In 2005, Japanese operators were pretty much occupied by switching their subscribers to 3G base. KDDI's initial lead in 3G disappeared as NTT DoCoMo finished the year with more than 20 million 3G subscribers. And DoCoMo still has a room to grow as it converted to 3G only around 40% of its user base, while KDDI is nearly out of human resources with 83% of its user base already enjoying 3G services. Vodafone was a big disappointment in 2005, losing customers during the whole year. However, Vodafone recorded some net additions in the last two months, which can be seen as a sign of recovery.

NEC chip: 50 hours of non-stop audio playback on cellphone

Credit: watch.impress.co.jp
NEC Electronics began shipping samples of its new audio processor for mobile handsets the "μPD99910" for JPY1,500 ($13).

The good thing about this chip is that it enables non-stopable song playback for 50 hours, according to the company. No doubts, the longer playback capability of the handset will be a great differentiator for cellphone manufacturers. However, at the price of $13, the "μPD99910" will significantly add to the final price of mobile phone.

NEC plans to start the mass production of the "μPD99910" in April 2006 with an output capacity of 400,000 chips per month.

Vendor's site: NEC Electronics

Can basic phones in Japan count as mid-range in US?

Credit: IT Media
KDDI au announced it would sell Sanyo's three basic handsets, starting in late February. Those are the A5518SA, "Sweets pure", and "Junior" A5520SA. All three models are running on a slower CDMA2000 1x network and supposed to be entry-level phones in Japan. But from the US perspective, they spot at minimum a mid-range set of functionality and features, when compared to basic phones rolled out in the United States. Judge for yourself. The common features for all three models include:

• 1.3MP built-in cameras
• QVGA main displays of 2.2 inch size
• 18MB of user accessible memory
• Infra-Red ports
• GPS navigation
• Bar code scanners (two-dimensional QR-code)
• Address book for 1,000 entries
• Push-to-Talk compatibility

Besides, the A5518SA model features miniSD memory slot, built-in FM radio, Email folder with 1MB memory allocated.

Japan's smartphones: W-ZERO3

Credit: IT Media
The W-ZERO3 smartphone is one of the first handsets in Japan to feature Windows Mobile 5.0 OS and provide dual mode PHS/ WLAN connectivity. Developed by Sharp for PHS service provider Willcom the W-ZERO3 smartphone went for sale in December 2005. The release of this smartphone is a practical step toward fixed mobile convergence by Willcom. Willcom intends to allow users to install Skype for VoIP application as an alternative. The selling price is about $373.

The W-Zero3 characteristics:

• Intel PXA processor
• Memory: Flash 128MB/ SDRAM 64MB
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• VGA display
• Sliding out full-text keyboard
• Wireless connectivity: PHS/ Wi-Fi (802.11b)
• MiniSD memory card slot
• USB port (mini B)
• Stand by time: 200 hours
• Talk time: 5 hours
• Weight: 220g

Foreign handset makers’ goal in Japan

Japan's leadership in launching 3G networks provides an opportunity for foreign handset makers to enter Japan's phone market, once being locked because of the proprietary 2G standard used by local mobile operators.

While Japanese carriers can cut costs by encouraging the import of handsets from abroad, the benefits for foreign manufacturers remain unclear.

Japanese market is saturated with a little opportunity for growth. The majority of handset sales is generated by replacement purchases of advanced handsets. Japanese consumers are tech savvy and spoilt by local vendors who offer attractive high-quality handsets.

Foreign manufacturers must present strong reasons to make Japanese users switch from local brands to international ones. So far, this attempt was not very successful. According to Financial Times (Jan.3, 2006), DoCoMo has managed to sell only about 20,000 out of 200,000 3G phones it procured from Motorola.

Perhaps, the main benefit foreign makers can get from their Japan quest is to learn from a joint development with domestic carriers. Working to meet the requirements set by Japanese carriers will provide manufacturers with the knowledge and skills they can use making handsets for other than Japan markets. Among the manufacturers who have expressed an interest in Japan's market are Nokia, Motorola, Korea's LG, Samsung and Pantech. The ones who should be worried are domestic handset makers who cannot match the economies of scale of large global manufacturers.

NTT DoCoMo: 20 million of 3G users now

NTT DoCoMo announced that its 3G subscriber base had reached 20 million users by the end of 2005. Now 3G users constitute about 40 percent of company's total subscribers.

It took five years and three month to get this milestone for NTT DoCoMo, which markets its 3G service as FOMA (Freedom for Mobile Access). The company plans to accelerate the process of switching users from 2G to 3G phones, by having a goal to convert 50% of its users to 3G base by Q1 2006.

Wine Labels Database

Photo Navi Wine by Zeta Bridge Corp. is a great example of service utilizing the cellphone's ability to take and send pictures over the cellular network.

You don't know anything about wine, but want to impress your friends with the extensive knowledge about the every kind of wine you taste at the winery? Well, in Japan all you have to do is to take a picture of the bottle's label and send it to the designated email provided by Zeta Bridge. In 15-20 seconds you will get an email back, containing the basic information about wine's kind, maker, year, etc. Moreover, it is free of charge.

Value
The company created a database, containing images of more than 3,000 wine labels stored with the corresponding data. Zeta Bridge also holds a know-how in image recognition technology, which allows to quickly identify images taken in low-light or bad conditions. The basic service is available to the clients of Japan's three major carriers.

Business Model
Zeta Bridge offers membership for about $2.70/month to be able to receive more detailed information to the wine requests. Besides, the company is engaged in m-commerce, enabling users to place orders for 500 labels out of its database via a cellphone.

Source: Asahi.com

Microsoft, Japan Telecom unite to offer combined service

Microsoft, Japan Telecom and Softbank BB are teaming up to provide new services that integrate VoIP, e-mail, instant messaging and other services. Trials of the services, which are meant to be offered to business customers, are expected to start in spring of 2006. ZDNet