Another good point for Sanyo in the U.S.

U.S. cell phone users are more satisfied with their phones now than they were a year ago, according to a consumer study released Thursday by J.D. Power and Associates. And they praise Sanyo not Motorola for delivering the best handsets in terms of physical design, operation, features and battery function. According to J.D. Power and Associates, Sanyo ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction, followed by LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Motorola ended up in the rankings just below the industry average, but Nokia performed even lousier - shy 5 points of the industry average's 101 mark.

Sanyo Katana: the refreshed look on thin form factor

Credit: pcsintel.com via Engadget Mobile

If the shots above are really of Sanyo's Katana 6600 handset, then Sanyo did a great job of...copying Motorola's Razr following the "thin" trend in handset manufacturing. While Katana does closely resemble the look of Motorola's Razr, it definitely a break-through for the Japanese maker in terms of design implementation and overall coolness. US carrier Sprint is surely to win some customers with Katana. The only thing to complain about Katana is its standard features, which, according to Engadget Mobile, include a "mere VGA camera and Bluetooth". Plus, Katana is lacking EV-DO support. The presence of a 2.2-inch QVGA display is to be appreciated though. Overall, Japanese makers who plan to expand abroad should closely watch Sanyo’s moves for the learning purposes.

KDDI au sold 50 million full-song downloads

KDDI au reported the 50 millionth full-song download in May 2006. Having started the music download service in November 2004, KDDI au was gradually increasing the number of sold songs, with downloads accelerating after first half of 2005 when in June 2005 the company hit the 10 millionth mark. The song downloads are available over the air (OTA) directly onto handset or via LISMO service, a PC side loading alternative. There are around 80 music stores selling full-song downloads for KDDI au users with a total number of songs available to be 150 thousand. The number of compatible handset models, including the recently announced 7 models, climbed to 34. At the end of November 2005, there were almost 5 million KDDI au handsets shipped with the OTA music download capability in Japan.

Glossary of Japan Mobile Terms launched

Just launched a beta version of the glossary of Japanese mobile terms. There are so many Japanese specific mobile terms around that I felt the urge to do some aggregation. I collected just a few of the terms so far, but intend to update the glossary constantly. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions of what terms to include or questions about Japanese words, feel free to comment below. Thank you.

When smart phones work in tandem with scales

Tanita, a world-known scales-maker, recently introduced the BC-502 Lieta model, a body composition scales with built-in Bluetooth connectivity. But the company did not just release the product, it came up with a business model that involved several partners:

• Kirin Well Foods – producer of diet products under the brand Lieta Café
• Meipull – developer of mobile application Palette-Navi for Lieta

Business Model
When a user buys the BC-502 Lieta scales, he can also download Meipull’s application onto his smart phone in order to retrieve personal data from the scales instantly. The BC-502 model is capable to beam such information as weight, body fat percentage, total body water percentage, bone mass and metabolic age, daily caloric intake, muscle mass recall, and visceral fat rating. On a smart phone’s side, this data is stored and can be seen in a graphical representation. Moreover, the smart phone user can opt to wirelessly upload the data onto the Lieta Café’s blog where the user can privately keep tracking of his weight with the corresponding daily diet menu from Lieta Café.

Pricing & Availability
The scales are offered at around $300 with the mobile application available for download from Lieta Café’s website. At the moment, only Motorola’s M1000 offered by DoCoMo is capable to work with Tanita’s scales.

Source: BCN Ranking (Japanese)

Japanese makers to go abroad with DoCoMo

According to Reuters, who picked up a story from Yomiuri Shimbun, DoCoMo is to make its all new handset models GSM-compatible within two years. This DoCoMo's move will provide a so-needed backing to its handset vendors to go overseas with their products. Few handset makers from Japan are successful abroad so far, but, thanks to DoCoMo, the number of them can grow significantly. Having expertise in 3G phone manufacturing, Japanese makers can become a real power in the competitive handset landscapes of Europe and North America. The question remains though: will they ever be able to go outside of DoCoMo i-mode's global umbrella?

Japanese cell phones: Healthy shipments in March 2006

JEITA’s March 2006 data shows revival in handset shipments in Japan compared to the previous year:

• The sales of cell phones and PHS handsets accounted for 6.05m terminals, a 127.7% increase from March 2005.
• By terminal type, cell phones grabbed a substantial share of shipments with 5.85m devices running on cellular networks and the rest being PHS handsets.
• As for the cell phone generations, 3G phones accounted for 5.24m terminals or 89.6% share, while 2G phones faced a further decline in shipments, making only 607 thousand.
• The total number of cell phone users in Japan by the end of March reached 91,792,000 people.

KDDI reports one million GPS users

Credit: IT Media

KDDI au announced that its paying user base of mobile GPS services had reached one million. KDDI started offering GPS-enabled cellphones in 2003 when it introduced a navigation service oriented on pedestrians. The service was able to pinpoint user’s current location and navigate him to the desired destination point by providing voice and on-screen instructions real time. In 2005, KDDI added another navigation service, targeting car-drivers with the ability to announce crossroads and re-calculate the route. Both services were developed by the company called Navi Time Japan.

3G penetration in Japan to hit 87% by March 2008

Asahi Shimbun reports that according to MM Research Institute's estimates, about 75 percent of cellphone subscribers in Japan will have 3G handsets by the end of March 2007 and the rate will climb to about 87 percent by the end of March 2008.

20-to-1: Japan's mobile vs. PC music downloads

Commenting on Apple-Softbank iTunes phone Business Week provides data that Japan's music downloads onto mobile handsets outstrip PC downloads at a 20-to-1 proportion. While there is a huge gap between mobile and PC music downloads, overall the mobile music downloads represent a small chunk of Japan's total music market:

Sales of digital music for cell phones accounted for around 5% of Japan's $4 billion music market last year, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan. "There's a lot more room for growth in digital music downloads for cell phones," says Ichiro Michikoshi of BCN, a tech market research firm in Japan.

Business Week also says that iPod held a 51.9% music player market share in Japan as of April 2006, followed by Sony (15.2%) and Panasonic (7.1%) who also produce music phones. The move into the handset turf by Apple will seriously deteriorate the handset makers' attempts to grab a market share from Apple, while at the same time will provide Apple with the bargaining power to get much-desired contracts with domestic top labels.

On a carrier's side, the Apple-Softbank phone could provide a boost to Softbank-Vodafone's mobile music service, which is far behind the rivals. For example, KDDI au started offering its full song download service in 2004:

As of mid-January, AU had sold 5.9 million music-playing phones to customers who have bought more than 300 million tunes over the carrier's wireless network. Its LISMO and DuoMusic services let subscribers mix their collection of songs downloaded to cell phones and PCs. One of its handsets, made by Toshiba, has a 4-GB hard disk drive that stores 2,000 songs.

Japanese handset makers markedly contribute to global smartphone shipments

The Asia-Pacific region claimed 46% of smart mobile device shipments worldwide in Q1 2006, according to Canalys. Overall, the global shipments of smart mobile devices increased 55% from 1Q 2005. Japanese handset makers played an important role in the increased shipments of smartphones, making Symbian OS global share in smart mobile devices to reach new high of 69%.

“In addition to the shipment increases made by Nokia and RIM, Japanese vendors such as Mitsubishi and Sharp have achieved very high volumes of their new Symbian-based FOMA smart phones in Q1, catapulting them into the global top five. With increased shipments from Fujitsu, and a new device from Sony Ericsson, Symbian is enjoying not only significant Japanese market success, but also seeing record global market share,” said Canalys senior analyst and research manager Rachel Lashford.

Japanese phone users remain pragmatic

Japan.Internet.com and Cross Marketing conducted a survey of Japanese cellphone users, asking about the optional handset features they use most of all.

Without any surprise, email came first, with 98% of respondents sending and receiving emails via a cell phone. The camera’s second place was easily predictable and reasonable (62%), taking into the account the mass penetration of camera phones in Japan. However, the third place was occupied by a trivial and very pragmatic feature of the alarm clock (61.7%), followed by similarly pragmatic calculator (45.3%) and calendar (33.3%). Surprisingly, the heavily promoted features like MP3 player and mobile TV were lagging behind.