NTT DoCoMo’s top ten selling phone models

GfK, a market research company, published ranks of top selling mobile phones with each operator in Japan during the last week of November. This post will cover NTT DoCoMo. As DoCoMo starts rolling 905 series phones, devices from the 904 series line-up occupied the top positions due to discounts and general popularity of one-seg phones. Fujitsu’s one-seg F904i model ranked first for the second week in a row followed with another one-seg model the 704i by Sharp (see table below for the rest).

NTT DoCoMo Top Ten
1 (1)	Fujitsu F904i
2 (3)	Sharp SH704i
3 (4)	Panasonic P904i
4 (2)	Sharp SH904i
5 (5)	Fujitsu Raku-Raku4 F883iES
6 (6)	Fujitsu Raku-Raku3 F882iES
7 (9)	NEC N704iμ
8 (8)	NEC N904i
9 (10)	Mitsubishi D904i
10 (7)	Sharp SH903iTV

Source: GfK via ITMedia

Google Japan intros new single portal for domestic mobile operators

Now mobile phone users of NTT DoCoMo’s iMode, KDDI au’s EZ Web, and Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai data services have one uniform URL they should use to get to Google Mobile - google.jp. Google Japan redesigned the mobile search method by getting rid of radio buttons with Web, Mobile and Images search options, leaving it to just a simple universal search. Google also report they optimized the local search and display of maps on mobile handsets. While this announcement is a step ahead for Google Mobile in Japan, it looks like the Japan’s team has a lot of localization work to do when comparing the array of mobile services available in the U.S. with those few offered in Japan (see image above).

Source: Google Japan Blog

Cyber education comes to mobile phones

Japan's Cyber University has become the first college to offer an online course to mobile-phone users. It was opened in April with government approval to grant bachelor's degrees and so far it has enrolled 1,850 students. The virtual campus is 71% owned by Softbank, which also decided to expand the education to the mobile phones planning to offer 100 something courses, including ancient Chinese culture, online journalism and English literature over the time.

Source: Boston.com

Gartner: Japan performed extremely well in 3Q

According to Gartner, the handset sales in Japan in 3Q07 were 21.8% up from a year ago, resulting in 13.1 million mobile phones being sold. Tokyo-based Gartner’s principal analyst for mobile communications research Nahoko Mitsuyama commented this as follows: “Japan performed extremely well this quarter, exhibiting one of the strongest performances worldwide. Sales to end users exceeded sales to the distribution channel by about one million units and excessive inventory that was built up in the second quarter of 2007 was successfully reduced in the third quarter.” I believe that mobile TV handset models contributed most to the increased demand for new phones.

Source: Gartner

Softbank launches Panasonic Mirror

Feature-wise Panasonic’s Mirror 821P handset for SoftBank would’ve had problems to differentiate itself from others if not for a couple of innovative design solutions. First of all, it is called Mirror for a reason as its front panel is polished to the level of being capable to reflect objects. Besides, if you look at the handset’s mirror panel at different angle it will change its color. Play of light if you wish. Another unusual but very useful solution is to place a clamshell open button into the hinge that will open the clamshell for you when pushed. It’s very convenient for one hand opening. However, other than that, it is a slim phone with quite a standard set of features, spotting 2MP camera with auto-focus and 10X digital zoom, 2.8 inch Wide QVGA screen and Full HTML browser.

Source: Nikkei (Japanese)

Phone Specs
Model:	Mirror 821P
Carrier:	SoftBank
Maker:	Panasonic
Price:	N/A
Form factor:	Clamshell
Color variations:	Black, White, Silver, Red, Purple
Weight:	113 g
Dimensions:	50 X 104 X 15.9 mm
Main display:	2.8 inch WQVGA TFT, 260K colors
Talk time:	200 min
Standby time:	400 hours
Platform / OS:	N/A
Memory:	37MB
Memory card slot:	microSD (up to 2GB)
GPS / Location:	No
Bluetooth:	Yes (Ver. 1.2)
Infrared:	Yes
USB:	Yes
Wi-Fi:	No
Camera:	2MP
Video calling:	Yes
One-seg TV:	No
Music player:	Yes
Browser:	Full HTML browser
FM radio:	No
Mobile Wallet:	No
QR-code:	Yes
Biometrics:	No

10 million of mobile wallet users at KDDI au

Contactless payment solutions continue to penetrate mobile phones in Japan at the accelerating rates. KDDI au registered 5 million mobile wallet users in March 2007, now they report 10 million users or 35% of their total subscriber base is actively using mobile phones to make all kind of purchases you do in your daily life. Thanks to the adoption of FeliCa, a flavor of Near Field Communications standard, by all major carriers the POS locations don’t have a headache of prepping different readers in order to process the mobile phone transactions. FeliCa rules in Japan. Expect the similar solutions to be deployed by AT&T, maybe even in 2008.

Source: KDDI au (Japanese)

KDDI au ships Hitachi Woo mobile TV phone

Mobile phones with built-in one-seg TV tuner are driving replacement sales in Japan, making any self-respecting handset manufacturer release its version of mobile TV phone. Now that everybody does mobile TV phone, how are you supposed to differentiate your product from the bunch of others. Well, there are some ways to do so. First of all, you are in luck if your company is also in flat-screen TV business, because you can borrow its established brand and re-use it for mobile phones. As a result, we have Sony Ericsson Bravia, Sharp Aquos, and Panasonic Viera mobile TV phones attacking the market. Hitachi is not exception here as it also uses its TV brand Wooo to woo mobile phone customers. In order to make the appeal of Wooo handset stronger, Hitachi says they adopted the same graphic quality control technology Picture Master they are using in Wooo TV sets. Besides, the external design of the Wooo handset also borrows from the Cutting Edge Design concept used in Wooo TVs. To further differentiate itself Hitachi brings into play Wide QVGA organic light emitting display that complements handset’s slim body (14.2 mm) in a very cool way. Not to mention handset’s 2MP camera, contactless payment capability, GPS navigation and full HTML browser. KDDI au is shipping it this week at unknown price under the Wooo W53H model name. I can only say, “Wow Wooo!”

Phone Specs
Model:	Wooo W53H
Carrier:	KDDI au
Maker:	Hitachi
Price:	N/A
Form factor:	Clam/Swivel
Color variations:	Black, White, Purple
Weight:	131 g
Dimensions:	51 X 107 X 14.2 mm
Main display:	2.8 inch WQVGA (240 X 400 pixels) OLED
Talk time:	250 min
Standby time:	360 hours
Platform / OS:	N/A
Memory:	100MB shared with BREW folder
Memory card slot:	microSD card
GPS / Location:	Yes (EZ Navi Walk - Voice input 3D navi)
Bluetooth:	No
Infrared:	Yes
USB:	N/A
Wi-Fi:	No
Camera:	2MP
Video calling:	No
One-seg TV:	Yes
Music player:	Yes (Lismo, SD Audio)
Browser:	Full HTML
FM radio:	No
Mobile Wallet:	Yes (EZ FeliCa, QUICKPay)
QR-code:	Yes
Biometrics:	No

Source: KDDI au

Do I look like Britney Spears? Mobile phone has the answer.

Mobile application developer J-Magic hit a jackpot when released “Kao-Cheki!” service back in August. Based on a face recognition algorithm, the service matches user’s photo taken by and sent from a cell phone to J-Magic’s servers with the faces of Japanese celebrities. The matching results are then sent back to user’s cell phone with the ability to click on the names of matched celebrities to get more information about them. The service proved to be a major hit with Japanese users playing to their psychological aspiration to be like a celebrity. Flattered with the pop idols’ resemblance, users flocked the mobile phone networks with email traffic. Knowing that Hollywood stars are very popular in Japan as well, J-Magic also started offering to match Japanese cell phone users’ faces with resembling looks of famous dwellers of Beverly Hills. Riding on the wave of success, J-Magic didn’t hesitate to exploit the popular theme by adding an element of monetization – elegant at first, bizarre at the end. It started by adding fragrance recommendations based on analysis of users’ faces and linking the recommendation results with mobile shopping site selling, well, of course, fragrance. Then, Pizza Hut’s promotions came, suggesting pizzas based on the characteristics of user faces. This week, J-Magic announced “Kao-Cheki! Market”, a mobile shopping service, which would recommend all kind of goods (more than 400 items) to users based on their photo’s analysis (yeah, right). J-Magic explains it is just a fun way of doing mobile shopping.

The success of J-Magic prompted others to come to take advantage of popularity of celebrity matching services. I’ve already covered in my previous post a service that matches celebrity hairstyles with user’s photo. Now, there is a service dubbed Koe-Cheki and developed by Advanced Media that matches user’s voice with similar voices of celebrities. There are two phone numbers to call, one for male and another for female users. After leaving a short pre-defined message, users will get the matching results, selected from a database of pre-recorded 500 celebrity voices, by mobile email.

eMobile first to introduce 7.3Mbps DL speeds

eMobile announced that they would upgrade their HSDPA network’s download speeds from 3.6Mbps to 7.2Mbps starting December 12th. They are first in Japan to do so, however the upload speeds remain unchanged at 384Kbps. In order to enjoy the new speeds, eMobile’s customers will need to buy the USB-based PC card D02HW by Huawei. According to eMobile’s management, currently the company’s user base accounts for 160,000 subscribers. Besides providing mobile broadband access directly and through MVNOs, eMobile also eye IP-based voice services to compete directly with cell phone operators. Last month, eMobile announced a partnership with Silicon Valley-based VoIP startup JaJah to pre-install its client onto the EM・ONEα smartphone. With JaJah onboard, eMobile promises domestic and international calling rates not only cheaper than those offered by carriers but even by Skype.
Source: eMobile

The launch of Toshiba W55T is limited to 3,000 models

KDDI au is launching today a limited edition of Toshiba’s super slim W55T, with only 3,000 models to be sold. KDDI is targeting the handset, which size-wise emulates the business card, at style-conscious business customers who value exclusivity and personalization. The personalization comes with the ability to engrave the owner’s name, initials or some citation on the stainless back panel of the handset. As for the accessories, the Weinheimer design house has created a leather case that looks like a business card holder and features an imprinted serial number of the handset.

The exclusive and limited offerings of cell phones are still rare occurrences in the mobile world but it can change with the saturation in the mature markets. Currently, to drive the replacement sales in such market carriers are introducing technological advancements in new handset models. While these tactics seem to be working in approaching the mass market, the carriers can’t afford to overlook the market segments that don’t want bells and whistles of advanced mobile phones. The strong interest to design and fashion from users, along with the desire to personalize your phone, is growing trends that will make carriers and handset manufacturers sell more limited and exclusive handset models in future.

Phone Specs
Model:	W55T
Carrier:	KDDI au
Maker:	Toshiba
Price:	$485~$290
Form factor:	Clamshel
Color variations:	Golden, Platina, Black
Weight:	104 g
Dimensions:	54 X 94 X 9.9mm
Main display:	2.4inch QVGA (240X400)
Talk time:	22o min
Standby time:	240 hours
Platform / OS:	N/A
Memory:	N/A
Memory card slot:	microSD
GPS / Location:	GPS (EZ Navi Walk)
Bluetooth:	No
Infrared:	N/A
USB:	No
Wi-Fi:	No
Camera:	2.0 megapixels
Video calling:	No
One-seg TV:	No
Music player:	Yes (LISMO)
Browser:	PC site viewer
FM radio:	Yes (EZ-FM)
Mobile Wallet:	No
QR-code:	Supported
Biometrics:	No

Mobile phones as fashion statement

The idea of mobile phone serving as not only a personal voice or data communications tool, but also as a fashion differentiator helping consumers complement their designer clothes is not new. However, in Japan, KDDI au moved a notch ahead in co-branding with famous designer houses (see the image above).