Recently, the wireless industry's big players have been zeroing in on Japan, drawn by the booming usage in mobile phones, and especially mobile Internet access services. Here's a sampling of initiatives announced in the past few months:
| Player(s) | Details | J@pan Inc Rating |
| DoCoMo, Mitsui,
and others | New joint venture Location Agent Inc. to offer position-locating services using PHS and GPS satellites.
No date announced. | Good move. Location-based services are expected to heat up; many new cars already come equipped with GPS navigation systems. Great way to track little Akachan or doggie. |
| Intel | New mobile phone strategy for Japan announced at Intel Developer Forum 2000 Fall Japan.
| Smart. Intel has also opened the Japan Competence Center to support R&D for mobile applications. You can't tell us they don't want to boost sales of their StrongARM mobile processor. |
| Sanwa Bank | Online securities trading service for EZWeb started September 1999.
| Ho-Hum Trend Follower. Nomura, Daiwa, Nikko, DLJdirect, and others already offer same on i-mode. How far can a commuting salaryman's portfolio drop before the next station? |
| IBM Japan, various PHS carriers | Released wireless IBM Workpad (Palm III clone) in July.
| Unfathomably, sold only to corporate clients -- too bad for retail surfers! This is a nice unit too; 32 Kbps and two megs of RAM. Oh well. |
| Palm Computing, DoCoMo | Palm to offer wireless-enabled PDA starting in 2001.
| Bears watching. First retail PDA with integrated wireless to compete against cellphones. For once, the Japanese import a cool gadget. |
| Walt Disney Internet Group | Character, music, and Disney info services for i-mode started in August.
| Kitsch, cute, or just late? Subway ads command "Click on Mickey's ears." Comes two years after i-mode first talked to Disney. |
| Sony, DoCoMo | Will launch entertainment sites accessible from both
i-mode and PS2 terminals this year. | Wow. Initially character-oriented, but music, film, and game content to come in 2001. |
| BroadVision, H&Q, Access Co., Itochu | New joint venture B-Mobile to deliver B2B
m-commerce with an Asian flavor. | All B2B, all the time. Browser-based fulfillment, inventorying, and order tracking via keitai and PDA using BroadVision's One-to-One Enterprise tech platform. B2B finally comes to the small screen. |
| Recruit | Its "Mobile One-One Navigator" ASP business targeting bargain-hunting wireless Web users started in June.
| We're underwhelmed. Recruit expects the service to be used by retailers hoping to notify users of scheduled bargains. We've seen better ideas from five-person startups with one-fifth the budget. |
| CitiGroup, NEC, KDDI | Trusted third-party payment settlement system to start in December.
| Trés cool. Use your cellphone to make on and offline purchases at participating merchants. This should disintermediate a few Web dinosaurs. |
| Astel mobile
carrier group | New Mozio Net access service for its 957,900 PHS subscribers by end of 2000.
| More microbrowser sales for Access! But DoCoMo is signing up this many subscribers every couple of weeks. Still, you've got to admire the spunk. |
| Hitachi, Sanyo | Pushing Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) to adopt their UDAC-MB technology for mobile download protection.
| SDMI = RIAA? Music will be mobile's killer app. We'll bless anything that respects artists' rights while busting the major labels' stultifying control. |
