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.
Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera talking at the Finland Japan Ubiquitous Society Conference
Panel discussion with TeliaSonera CEO Juho Lipsanen and KDDI-Chairman Murakami.
Japan’s top three mobile operators DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone announced plans to invest about US$ 15 billion during FY 2005 (April 2005 – March 2006):
Infrastructure investments (capex) by Japan’s mobile phone operators – Vodafone’s investments were systematically reduced and are by far the lowest of Japan’s three large operators
On April 28, 2005 KDDI‘s CEO Tadashi Onodera, announced spectacular results for the financial year April 2004 – March 2005. Net income increased by 71% and KDDI announced approximately US$ 4 Billion in investment capital expenditure for the financial year 2006 (April 2005 – March 2005).
March is the month when new subscriptions peak in Japan. During March 2005 around one million new subscribers signed up for mobile services in Japan, the net gain (new subscriptions minus cancellations) was 930,500. New subscribers were shared as follows between carriers:
Vodafone announced a new method to calculate numbers. Without this new way of calculating, Vodafone’s loss would have been: -58,400
Net growth (loss) of subscribers per month for Japan’s mobile operators – Vodafone drops into the red, losing subscribers despite a new way of counting themNet growth (loss) of mobile internet subscribers (i-Mode, EZweb and Vodafone Live!): since Vodafone renamed Jsky to Vodafone Live!, its rapidly losing market share
Japan’s mobile subscriber numbers for Feb 2005 came out yesterday…
DoCoMo is ahead again after a soft period on the strength of services and handsets, and KDDI/AU is still going strong driven by the designer series, good tariffs/discounts, music, WIN etc.
Willcom (the former DDI-Pocket) is strengthening under new management, new name and new campaigns and network upgrades, TuKa is falling back after it’s great “TuKa-S” success… and Vodafone succeeded to stabilize subscriber losses somewhat which is a mild step in the right direction and might be the first indication of Mr Tsuda’s influence…
Stimulated by the needs of our customers, who need to roll out services across the networks in Japan, we have started market surveys, interviewing mobile phone customers of all kinds on Tokyo’s streets in “focus groups”, as we do when required for our customers to get a feel for the market. I always make a point to take part personally in such consumer research, and often do some myself. In the case of mobile phone habits, the first approach at interviewing just reflects back the messages of the commercials and publicity campaigns. Only in-depth interviewing and discussion then reveals the real thoughts which are normally quite different. We learnt a lot about what average Japanese consumers think about DoCoMo, AU and Vodafone, building up a good picture. But the numbers also tell a clear story:
Subscriber net growth/loss for Japan’s mobile phone and PHS operators
The following figure compares Sales (Financial year ending March 31, 2004), Net profits after taxes(Financial year ending March 31, 2004), and market capitalization (as of February 17, 2005) for DoCoMo, KDDI and Vodafone (in each case consolidated for the global company):
Sales, net income and market cap for docomo, KDDI and Vodafone for the financial year 2004
Turns out that music is a killer application on mobile – we are working on a number of projects in the mobile music field. We just completed our “Mobile Music Japan” report.
With an incredibly much smaller potential customer base KDDI/AU delivered more downloads of 20-30 second songs (chaku-uta) than Apple’s i-Tunes. Motorola reportedly announced a mobile phone incorporating i-Tunes at the recent CES show in Las Vegas. KDDI/AU‘s tremendous success with chaku-uta indicates that combining Motorola phones with i-Tunes will be very successfull indeed. AU reported 1 million Chaku-Uta-Full downloads within the first 48 days of service (chaku-uta-full started on November 19, 2004).
KDDI – au Design Series mobile phones (today: iida brand)
Marc Newson designed Talby phone and user interface for KDDI / au
On 13 October 2004, KDDI/AU announced “talby”, the third phone in their “AU design series”. Volume sales start in December 2004. We expect that “talby” will be similarly successful as “infobar” one year ago.
“talby” is a fully featured 3G phone with camera (640×480 pixel), QVGA display, EZappli/BREW, Chaku-uta, email, EZweb, PIM, GPS/EZnaviwalk,…
