Keitai -Japanese Cellphones

New York Times article: Why Japan’s Cellphones Haven’t Gone Global

One may state a widely accepted concept in the IST community: Japanese society is 5 years ahead of the remaining world: Therefore, the requirement level of terminals is far more advanced and complex.

Being a "first mover” means to open the way, so the industry has to be innovative and develop projects before the Standardization Stage. Japanese companies never relay went too far to massively market mobile devices outside Japan maybe because other players moved faster. Anyway, they enjoy a profitable market not being appropriately addressed by outside competitors.

In the same line, unlike other companies you do not see Japanese Telecom Companies moving to foreign markets. But NEC is doing OK, not on consumer products but on networking solutions.

Iphone is really not doing so well in Japan, missing a few items like: one seg, rfid card, Wallet Mobile and other issues. One Seg is particularly useful as it allows people to access broadcast DTTV -Digital Terrestrial Television, directly from the keitai (Japanese mobile phone), not using data channels. One Seg may be acquired separately and connected to Mobile or PC thru USB connection.

Vodafone failed on the Japanese market because they follow a global model. Vodafone considers that the mobile communications market is global one, so they were developing global solutions and achieving strong economies of scale, mostly everywhere. Like many others, they failed to understand the idiosyncrasies of markets and this is the deadly sin of laziness in Japan. SoftBank is doing OK

The big bang of Mobile telecom boosted after the introduction of pre-paid cards. It was a project which began in Portugal in the middle 90´s. The finance department of TMN was worried about the high levels of bad debt that would inevitable arrive from the dramatic increase of sales. Pre-paid technology, associate to mobile ATM technology was then developed. They could hold other companies from using this advantage for one year and they had a tremendous boost over competitors.

Pre-paid cards were on the origin of their success in Brazil and other countries. Nevertheless, pre-paid cards raise many issues about the identification of users and are widely used in criminal environments. In Japan I was always told by people in telecom that this was the reason NTT-Docomo and other Japanese did not adopt this worldwide industry standard.

Back to the spring

Today I feel I am coming back to my early days.

It´s a terrible rainy day...

Where is the sun?

Did the head of the demon snake Rahu swallow the sun today?

Anyway, I can still feel the sun shining in my heart and in the soul of all my loves ones,

Your Radio Frequency Footprint

RFID passports: a tragedy waiting to happen

It was interesting to read this article, as this is a critical issue with implication far beyond our worst expectations.

Can you figure this out: All over the world you may be followed and it´s not only the police that’s tracking you, everyone with the right hardware may do it?

So, from now on remember: you are no longer alone on the middle of the crowd.

I heard a big fuss about this theme on the discussions concerning the new foreign resident card in Japan and regarding the new RFID car plates in Portugal. It´s no more about the secrecy of data collect by the authorities, it is also about being randomly spied by anyone with the means for it

But not all skies are hazy; there are ways to find protection against this threat by using RFID blocking devices, already available in the market.

Still, the issue is on for cars and other vehicles is on. Possibly, one may consider it as another stimulus for public transportation.

Indexes of Business Conditions May 2009 Preliminary Release

This data was released at 14:00(JST) on Jul.6. by the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan.

It appears that we are crossing the "hook of bad to good times".
Production is rising, GDP is expected to grow and expectations are improving.
Now is the time change and grasp new opportunities.
Have you been thinking about it?
Gambare Japan!