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Japan’s mobile environment today
Sorry for not updating the blog for a long time. These days I’m hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, rather than writing blog entries. Please visit my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/masayuki.kawagishi or follow @_Yuki_K_ on Twitter 😉 I see that the world of mobile phones is rapidly changing for years. Nokia, one of the dominant mobile phone manufacturers, is disappearing, and Apple is expanding the market with the iPhone, its flagship mobile phones with a music player, games, and other applications all-in-one. Following apple, various mobile phone manufacturers, from Samsung to small makers in China, are releasing smartphones with the Android operating system developed by Google. In Japan, I think […]
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I’ve got iPhone4!
It’s a little bit late, though. I had used Nokia N82 with Softbank Mobile’s SIM card as a main mobile phone so far. I had told my friends the phone number of it. But it had been kind of inconvenient because it had had narrower signal reception areas than the mobiles of NTT DoCoMo so if you had gone underground or deep into a big building you couldn’t have had it communicated. More than that, (it’s the situation peculiar to Japan, though) you can send SMS only to the mobiles of the same carrier as yours. Most of my friends had NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so I’d wanted to change […]
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Singapore – the second day
I purchased a prepaid SIM card with 3-day broadband service at the M1 counter in Changi Airport. Unlike normal mobile phones like Nokia, iPhone didn’t receive an APN or other network setting information needed for internet access. The M1 counter lady said I needed to bring the iPhone to the M1 shop at Paragon and have it installed settings there. I asked the MRT station staff where I could get to Paragon, and she answered I should go to Orchard station, so I took the MRT train to Orchard. Here’s Paragon. It was huge. M1 shop was on the B1 level. When I waited in line in front of the […]
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Presentation by Ryuji Yamada
Last night I attended a meeting for alumni of Osaka University, where I graduated, to see the presentation by Ryuji Yamada, President and CEO of NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan’s mobile phone operators. Mr. Yamada is also a graduate from Osaka University and was invited to this meeting as a guest speaker. He talked to us about NTT DoCoMo’s current circumstances, innovation plans and future strategies. He said in advance that the revenue from voice communications was decreasing year by year and so far the loss was not completely compensated yet by the revenue from packet communications, so innovations in packet communication was important. He also added that one of […]
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Some requests on Japanese mobile phones
I heard the news that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan started discussing a policy to require mobile phone carriers to release SIM-lock-free handsets from the next generation. As is often written in some other entries of this blog, I have been dissatisfied with the current cellular phones in Japan because they are far from the global standards. Today mobile phones are widely spread worldwide, ranging from smartphones like iPhone or Nokia N900 communicator to cheap simple cell phones only for calling and text messaging. They are handy, convenient and easy to use even in developing countries where electric supply is not sufficient. Thanks to their size, […]
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I’ve got an iPhone!
I’ve bought an iPhone. I ordered it from a broker in Hong Kong who got it at Apple Store Hong Kong, because the iPhone sold in Hong Kong is locked to no particular mobile carriers. In Japan, you can buy an iPhone at a Softbank cell phone shop but they sell only the iPhone locked to Softbank. Softbank does offer international roaming service, but if you go out of Japan and use it with a Softbank SIM card in a foreign country they will charge tremendously high international roaming charges to your bill (It costs as high as hundreds of thousand Yen per day! Crazy!). That’s why I’ve got an […]
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I’ve got Blackberry Bold!
Maybe it’s a bit late to be excited to have Blackberry Bold now, but anyway I’ve got one because I had a bonus this week. I ordered it online and this morning a courier delivered it to my house. These are a cradle, a charger, USB cables and screen protectors I ordered from Hong Kong before hand. I pulled my SIM card off my Blackberry 8707h I kept so far, put it into the Blackberry Bold and turned its power switch on. After several initial setups, the main menu appeared and NTT DoCoMo network was captured. One problem occured. I found there was no email settings so I couldn’t set […]
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I got Blackberry!
The nearest DoCoMo Shop had informed me that a new Blackberry device (Blackberry 8707h) had arrived, so I got there this Monday and bought it. The handset costed 28,000 Yen. Very reasonable. Setup is very easy. I keep three of my email addresses (including Blackberry-specific one) in this handset. I can catch incoming mails and reply to them, wherever I am. The key strokes are very confortable. Even if you type long emails your thumbs won’t get tired. I’m not saying that I got completely accustomed to this gadget right now, but soon I will. This must soon become the item that I can’t do without, as many Americans may […]
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Blackberry to be released to Japanese individuals in August
NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan’s major cell phone carriers, announced that in August this year it would sell Blackberry devices to public. NTT DoCoMo is the only carrier that has the right to distribute Blackberry in Japan. Although Blackberry is today an essential communications tool for those from businesspersons to general people in the world, Japan has been the only first-place country where no Blackberry services for individuals are currently available. The only exception is Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES) provided by NTT DoCoMo to corporations only, but BES is closed to private persons because NTT DoCoMo fears that Blackberry may affect the sales of I-mode, one of NTT DoCoMo's core […]