Three Of Japan’s Top Telcos Standardize Display Of Email Emoticons

Three of Japan’s four biggest mobile carriers, namely NTT Docomo, KDDI au, and eAccess, are about to make it easier for their combined subscriber base of roughly 90 million people to exchange emails with other. The plan is to standardize the display of emoticons, or emoji in Japanese, across handsets offered by the three networks. As… Continue reading Three Of Japan’s Top Telcos Standardize Display Of Email Emoticons

iPhone 4S Japan – Newcomer KDDI au Runs Even Fight Against Softbank

BCN Ranking announced the statistics of the first week sales of iPhone 4S in Japan. At this new version, the nation’s 3rd carrier Softbank Mobile‘s exclusive distribution since iPhone 3G ends, the 2nd largest carrier KDDI au enters to sell iPhone. The ranking shows the two carriers’ iPhone 4S with three variations of memory-size, 64M/32M/16M,… Continue reading iPhone 4S Japan – Newcomer KDDI au Runs Even Fight Against Softbank

Livedoor, Softbank, Fon to Offer Free Wi-Fi after the Quake

On March 12th, some Wi-Fi providers in Japan started offering free connection after the devastating earthquake that hit northeast Japan on Friday afternoon. Sofbank Mobile Sofbank Mobile announced that they are completely opening up their public wireless LAN service “Softbank Wi-Fi Spot” for free. The connection is available for anyone who is in the service… Continue reading Livedoor, Softbank, Fon to Offer Free Wi-Fi after the Quake

Softbank Mobile To Transform iPhone4 IC-Card Enabled… With Stickers

Softbank Mobile, exclusive iPhone seller in Japan, today announced their new IC-Card(FeliCa) products for iPhone 4: IC-Card stickers. iPhone not having FeliCa, RFID smart card, is one of lamentations for users who can not give up their e-wallets function on their Japanese cellphone. One of the reasons that half of Japanese iPhone users still keeps… Continue reading Softbank Mobile To Transform iPhone4 IC-Card Enabled… With Stickers

Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone

Japanese cellphone is the birthplace of emoji – emoticon as a single letter. Now they are usable outside of Japan on Gmail and iPhone. By Google’s and others effort, October 11, 2010, they were included in the international standard, Unicode version 6.0. So now those pictogram are supposed to be used for communication among anyone… Continue reading Sending Emoji Musical Note May Result In Poop Mark On Japanese Cellphone

LTE vs. Extention Of Current Techs: Who Brings Us The World’s Fastest Mobile Broadband?

Japan’s largest mobile operator NTT DoCoMo announced at their seasonal press conference that it would launch an LTE (long-term evolution) service called Xi[J] (pronounced as “crossy”) on Christmas eve of this year in Japan’s highly populated areas of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.   LTE is collectively known as 3.9G mobile technology standard that allows you to… Continue reading LTE vs. Extention Of Current Techs: Who Brings Us The World’s Fastest Mobile Broadband?

Mixi Unveils SocialPhone For Softbank’s Androids

Mixi, one of Japan’s biggest social networking services, which is the most similar with Facebook among three, announced their new smartphone application plan with the third largest cellphone carrier Softbank Mobile. The trademarked “SocialPhone” is an Android application service which utilizes phone data like phone number data with Mixi’s social graphs. The service is planned… Continue reading Mixi Unveils SocialPhone For Softbank’s Androids

Is Yahoo! Japan Switching To Google Search?

Wall Street Journal’s blog All Things Digital(ATD) reported that Yahoo! Japan is going to announce that they will use Google Search as its search backend, switching from their customized Yahoo! Search Technology(YST). At this point, there are no Japanese media reported this rumour, except Bloomberg Japanese [J] which just refers All Things Digital. Until more… Continue reading Is Yahoo! Japan Switching To Google Search?

The 2010 Most Popular Company For Japanese Job Seekers Is Google

Japanese outplacement firm Intelligence [J] released their research of what companies people want to join next [J], done on 5,000 of office workers between age 25 to 34. On the ranking, Google jumped up from 2009’s third position because of good feeling to their “innovation” and “potential”. 2010 Rank in 2009 Company 1 3 Google… Continue reading The 2010 Most Popular Company For Japanese Job Seekers Is Google

Softbank’s Online Magazines App Viewn Gets Bumbling Start

Although Apple’s digital publishing service iBookstore on iPad has been doing well in US, like other countries it is not really ready for Japanese iPad users. It is considered to take time to realize as local publishers are more conservative to collaborate. Sotftbank’s 100% subsidiary Viewn [J], which had been introduced by CEO Masayoshi Son,… Continue reading Softbank’s Online Magazines App Viewn Gets Bumbling Start