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Monday, March 26, 2007

50 years EU celebration in Tokyo

Today was the 50th anniversary of the treaty of Rome which was at the beginning of the European Union. In Tokyo we had a big party at the top of Roppongi Hills - 52nd floor. Here are some pictures...








Saturday, March 17, 2007

Green Tokyo Tower on St. Patrick's Day

Tokyo Tower was illuminated in green color on St Patrick's Day:









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Sunday, January 28, 2007

3G Summit & Mobile Payment workshop

22-25 January 2007 MarcusEvans organized the "Global 3G Evoluation Forum" in Makuhari near Tokyo.

Speakers included:

Takanori Utano, Executive Vice-President and CTO of DoCoMo,
Takehiro Nakamura of NTT and Vice-Chairman of 3GPP
Jean-Pierre Bienaime, Chairman of the UMTS-Forum,
Gaston Ormazabal of Verizon Labs
and many other leading mobile communications managers from all over the world.

Jointly with Jan Larsson, General Strategy Manager of TeliaSonera International Carrier division, I chaired all sessions all day on Wednesday January 24, 2007.

On Monday, January 22, 2007, I held a three hour workshop about "Mobile Payment".

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Ericsson Strategy & Technology Summit Tokyo

Eurotechnology's CEO was invited to attend Ericsson's Strategy & Technology Summit in Tokyo on November 15, 2006.

Ericsson's CEO, Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson CSO - Chief of Strategy, Japan-CEO Rory Buckley and other Ericsson top management presented Ericsson's strategy and vision. About 100 investors and investment bank analysts were invited to attend.

I was given the opportunity to share the lunch table with CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg and had a fascinating discussion.

With some of the largest and most advanced mobile investments,
Japan's mobile market is one of the most important markets globally for Ericsson. Recently Ericsson won major contracts from SoftBank and eAccess/eMobile.



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Thursday, October 26, 2006

Briefing TeliaSonera top management

The day before the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference in Tokyo, I briefed the top-management (CEO, CTO and other top managers) of TeliaSonera, on October 26, 2006.

The next day, October 27, 2006, the Finland-Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference was held. Tero Ojanpera, Exec VP and CTO of NOKIA, gave an overview of NOKIA's vision of communications, other speakers and panelists included Juho Lipsanen, Finland CEO of TeliaSonera, KDDI Chairman Murakami.




Panel discussion with TeliaSonera CEO Juho Lipsanen and KDDI-Chairman Murakami.


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Thursday, September 21, 2006

Japan's Mobile Phone Industry and u-Japan (Talk announcement)

Title: "Japan's Mobile Phone Industry and u-Japan"

Date and Time:
Thursday, 12th October 2006, 17:00-19:00

Location (tentative, please check closer to the date for changes):
Main Conference Room 4F, EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, Tokyo
Click for a map

Download PowerPoints of the presentation here:
(pdf-file, 50 pages, 19 figures, 12 photographs)


Agenda:

Japan's mobile phone and broad-band markets are about 3-6 years ahead of Europe: new services are typically invented or first brought to market in Japan, 3-6 years earlier than in Europe. Internet in Japan is generally much faster and much cheaper than in Europe. For this reason and because of it’s size, Japan’s telecom markets are full of opportunities for European companies with the right products and the right strategy, and for investors with the necessary knowledge.
Japan’s mobile phone industry is notoriously difficult to understand for Europeans because it’s
market logic is very different from Europe’s, and because the pace of innovation and structural change is much faster, and because of the language barriers.
This talk will explain the driving forces behind recent dramatic changes in Japan’s mobile telecom sector, and will explain new changes that the “ubiquitous-Japan” (“u-Japan”) policy will bring in the near future.
Do you need to know what Europe’s mobile phone and internet markets will look like in 2010 or 2015? – Come to this talk and you will get a good look into Europe’s IT future about 5 years ahead, as well as Japan’s telecom markets today.

Download detailed announcement and registration form:
Seminar invitation (pdf-file) Seminar invitation (MS-Word file)

Background

Following Vodafone's decision to end business in Japan and the announcement of the sale of Vodafone-Japan to SoftBank, this author has been asked to brief the Technology Attaches of the 25 EU Embassies in Tokyo on Japan's mobile phone and telecom sector (download the presentation as a pdf-file here).
The EU Technology Attaches were particularly interested in the impact on Europe by the termination of by far the biggest ever European investment in Japan. Clearly it is also important to determine, what other European companies can learn from Vodafone's experience.
Eurotechnology Japan KK has been awarded a contract by the European Union to benchmark Japan's telecom sector vs EU and make recommendations.

More about Japan's telecom sector:JCOMM report (pdf-file)

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Ludwig Boltzmann - 100 Years

Ludwig Boltzmann (February 20, 1844 - September 5, 1906) is our company's founder's great grandfather - and one of our company's great inspiration. We are working hard to continue his tradition of innovation and excellence and diligent work.

Ludwig Boltzmann died exactly 100 years ago today, on September 5, 1906.

Ludwig Boltzmann worked in many different areas and found the first explanations for many phenomena. He did not just create one single invention, but he created very many.

Boltzmann is best known for his work in gas theory: using complex mathematical tools, many of which he had developed himself, Boltbmann linked the macroscopic "Entropy" of gases with the microscopic forces between atoms and molecules in gases. "Entropy" was initially just a useful macroscopic concept similar to temperature and pressure of a gas developed during the early days of industrialization in England to optimize steam engines. Boltzmann showed that Entropy is a much much deeper fundamental concept, and showed how Entropy is related to the collissions between atoms and molecules in a gas and that Entropy expresses the probability that a body is found in a certain state.

In Boltzmann's days, it was not generally accepted that atoms and molecules exist. Actually, in Vienna in those days, in order to survive socially, Boltzmann had to use very careful words: he usually did not say directly that he is convinced that atoms and molecules exist: he said that they are just a useful concept, whether they exist or not.

Ludwig Boltzmann was the last great classical physicist. He knew of several unexplained puzzles: Brown's motion, the discrete spectra of atoms, curvature of space, but he could not explain them with the classical methods he mastered. Today Boltzmann's methods, the Boltzmann constant, the
Boltzmann Equation and much of his work is used every day in telecoms, information technology, electronics, chemical industry and many other areas.

Read more about Ludwig Boltzmann...

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Monday, August 28, 2006

SoftBank's flagship store

Yesterday (August 26, 2006) SoftBank opened the new Roppongi flagship store.



SoftBank's white/silver/grey colorscheme replaces Vodafone's bright red:




YAHOO and Google's mobile strategies

Japan is a couple of years ahead of Europe and US in mobile communications by most measures.

What are GOOGLE and YAHOO doing in Japan's mobile sector?

GOOGLE partnered with KDDI (Japan's No. 2 mobile operator with about 25 million mobile subscribers) to develop mobile search.

YAHOO-Japan made a large step forward when SoftBank acquired Vodafone's Japan operations in March this year.

SoftBank's latest mobile phones include a "Y" = YAHOO button:



Yesterday, August 26, 2006, SoftBank opened it's new flagship store in Tokyo-Roppongi including a YAHOO-Spot:


Tuesday, August 08, 2006

iPhone? iTunes/iPod phones?

There is a lot of discussions about whether Steve jobs is going to announce an iPhone or iPod-Phone at the Apple Computer Developer's Conference in SF - according to the headline report on Saturday May 13th, 2006 in Nihon Keizai Shinbun ( the world's largest business daily ) it's already known since May this year that Apple and SoftBank are developing such a joint mobile phone with iPod and iTunes functions.

On March 17 SoftBank announced the full acquisition of Vodafone's Japan subsidiary - the former J-Phone -  jointly with YAHOO-Japan as a co-investor - so with about 15 million mobile subscribers in the world's most advanced mobile market (Japan), SoftBank/Apple will have the firepower to make such a phone a success, provided it's tuned to Japanese consumers' needs and dreams - my guess is that it probably will be.

By pure coincidence, the Apple/SoftBank headlines appeared one or two days  after DoCoMo and Microsoft announced a music cooperation.

Apple/SoftBank iPod mobile phones coupled to iTunes could have quite a lot of impact on Japan's music industry: about 20% of Japan's music sales are to mobile phones. Of all music downloads in Japan about 6% are fixed line internet downloads, and 94% are music downloads to mobile phones: internet music downloads are almost neglibile in comparison to mobile phone music downloads.

Therefore even if iTunes has a huge market share in the fixed line internet world, iTunes  cannot have much impact in Japan overall if limited to fixed line  internet downloads. iTunes downloads to mobile phones will change the business models of Japan's music industry - at the moment music downloads to mobile phones cost a lot more than iTunes downloads. An iPod/iTunes music store could reshape the mobile music market in Japan.

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