Japan's third-ranked mobile carrier Softbank Mobile, also known as the exclusive carrier for iPhone in Japan, will start user application for the complimentary distribution program of femtocell base stations for individual customers and small-sized stores next month. The company is considered as being relatively poorer than the other carriers in terms of the quality of cellphone service coverage, and this program aims at filling the signal-blind spots at low cost and wiping away such a bad impression among their current customers and possible customers.

Individual applicants for the program should be subscribing to Softbank Mobile's 3G service, and a femtocell base station with an ADSL service connecting the station and the carrier's network will be provided for free. Store applicants have no restriction to apply, and a femtocell base station or a WiFi router with an ADSL service will be provided for free, too. The application is scheduled to be available from May 10th.

Meanwhile, some customers who have experienced signal weakness problem with their Softbank Mobile handsets at their places forced to purchase a femtocell equipment for USD120 before the program was announced. The customers complained about such an unfair deal caused by the difference of when the equipment is ordered (before the announcement/after the announcement). One of them called Softbank Mobile's customer support for dispelling that unfair customer treatment, but a service representative answered "that's no way" and recommended him to request the improvement on Twitter to Masayoshi Son, Softbank Mobile's CEO (@masason[J]). Mr. Son apologized for his company's rudeness in reply for that tweet, and he announced femtocell equipments would be provided absolutely free to all customers regardless of when the application is submitted.

Tags: Cellular Phone, Company, Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

MM Research Institute Ltd. announced their research on Japanese cellphone shipment share in year 2009 [J].

Sharp, Panasonic Mobile, Fujitsu, NEC, Kyocera, Sony-Ericsson, Apple, Toshiba, Casio, LG and others

2008 market share by the same MM Research was here [J],

Sharp, Panasonic Mobile, NEC, Fujitsu, Sony-Ericsson, Toshiba and others

As always, English media like Bloomberg already reportedApple Captured 72% of Japan Smartphone Market in 2009. There, "only the smartphone" share was picked up and said Apple got 72% of Japan, without telling what smartphone means here in Japan.

The definition of "smartphone" is vague even among Japanese. Japanese Wikipedia [J] says that smartphone means that the phone has any of these operating system; "Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, iPhone OS, Android, BlackBerry OS, Palm OS and Palm WebOS". That is, all non-Japanese OS.

Apple built up their 4.9% share in few years is a great achievement in this crookedly-evolved competitive cellphone market, even though it was initially supported by loyal users of Macintosh and iPod, both had succeeded more than world average in Japan, and exclusive partner Softbank Mobile's aggressive "Substantially Free" campaign, which is now being extended over a year.

But honestly, I dislike English media repeat posting "latest iPhone domination in Japan" news with misleading number, which should not be good also for serious foreign companies who are thinking how they should go into Japanese mobile market. You must support Japanese cellphone... yet.

See Also:

Half Of Japanese Male iPhone Users Keep Their Japanese Cellphone

If iPhone Were No.1 in Japan, Sony Would Be No.1 Music Player

Tags: Cellular Phone, Japan, Trend by Akky Akimoto
2 Comments »

Since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has been ruling the Japanese Administration, the styles of governmental disclosure has been changing.   Unlike U.S. having several politically-oriented TV networks such as CSPAN-1, CSPAN-2 and CSPAN-3, Japanese diet sessions and minister's briefings used to be televised only on public broadcaster NHK.  But its limited number of TV channels are not enough to cover all sessions and political live events.   In these days, some ministers turned to allow Internet streamcasters to join their briefings and to televise it live, which could be a good excuse of the administration that encourages disclosure to the people.

Japan's governmental revitalization unit[J] approved five services to streamcast budget screenings ("shiwake" for short in Japanese) live including Q&A sessions of lawmakers vs. bureaucrats.   The following five services plan to televise the sessions starting in the mornings on 23rd(Fri),  26th(Mon), 27th (Tue) and 28th(Wed).   (all in Japan Time)

• Nico Nico Douga[J] (user registration required)
• Stickam Japan[J]
• Ustream
• ShareCast[J]
• DMM.com[J] (user registration required)

Here are live screens which will show you the sessions (on Ustream).

Tags: Japan, News by Masaru IKEDA
No Comments »

On Tuesday, Tokyo-based Cyber Agent's subsidiary in Silicon Valley, Cyber Agent America launched a metaverse called Comic World as a Facebook app basically targeting international users.   In the app, you can dress up your own avatar with clothing you've purchased with a virtual money called ComicCash.   The user account for Comic World is compatible with that for Ninja Trick which is a war game and has been introduced last May on Facebook as well.   The company expects one million users will join Comic World by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, last month the company launched Ameba Pico(see this Asiajin story for more) on Facebook, the Americanized version of Japanese popular virtual avatar service called Ameba Pigg[J], more than 500,000 users have joined the service in a month.   Recently they started running a TV commercial[J] campaign in Japan for promoting Ameba Pigg.   As for Ameba Pigg, more than 8.5 million users have joined the service as of April 11th.

See Also:

• Virtual world Ameba Pigg to go English next spring in Americanized version

• Comic Games Blog: Here comes ComicGames and ComicWorld!! (Cyber Agent America's official blog)

Tags: Japan, New Service, USA by Masaru IKEDA
1 Comment »

This is a follow-up article for Asiajin » Japan Original Microsoft Office Assistant “Saeko Sensei” Coming Back.

Japanese MS-Office's Clippy alternative "Saeko Sensei" girl finishes its teaser period. Now she, "Saeko 2010", makes an inaugural speech,

She has departed to local cities with a mission to get 2010 people's words "Well, Office 2010 is cool". Official movie here,

Saeko 2010 and her new buddy, "Kairu 2010", which is also a renewal version of Japanese MS-office assistant dolphin, starts tweet at @saeko_2010 and @kairu_2010, too.

Microsoft Office 2010 shipping date is also announced as May 1st for enterprises, and June 17th for consumers by Microsoft Japan (MSKK), Nikkei ITPro reports [J].

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
1 Comment »