Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent examples. → Read More
Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn’t want to be a “cell phone Galapagos” anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiquitous in Japan, but now the country’s top three telcos (NTT Docomo, KDDI au, and SoftBank Mobile) are trying to switch from the Nippon-only Osaifu Keitai system to the Type A and Type B NFC standards used globally.
The problem for the carriers is that Osaifu Keitai (“Portable Wallet”), which is based on Sony’s FeliCa RFID smart card technology, isn’t compatible to the Type A and B NFC standards. Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank have set up the so-called Japan Mobile NFC Consortium to coordinate the domestic adoption of those standards with “service suppliers and handset manufacturers”. → Read More
We’ve already shown you the three coolest smartphones Japanese carrier SoftBank announced for its home market today, the LUMIX Phone 101P from Panasonic, Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE 102SH, and the DELL STREAK PRO 101 DL. But SoftBank actually introduced a total of nine new Android models today (plus a feature phone).
Here’s the carrier’s entire fall/winter line-up for the Japanese market. → Read More
And here’s the third phone from Japanese carrier SoftBank‘s fall/winter line-up that deserves a dedicated article: it’s the so-called DELL STREAK PRO 101DL [JP], which the company will start offering to its subscribers in January 2012 (price tbd). And this isn’t an Android tablet but a phone.
And judging by the specs, it’s going to be quite a nice one. → Read More
Sharp has been producing quite a few nice Android phones for the Japanese market lately (with a 25% share, it’s the leading manufacturer over here), and today, the company introduced [JP] another great-looking handset, the AQUOS PHONE 102SH.
Local carrier SoftBank will start distributing the phone in Japan in December as part of its fall/winter line-up. And there can be now doubt that subscribers can get a real monster with this model. → Read More
It happened in the US a few months ago, and now something similar is about to happen in Japan, too: in one of Apple’s biggest markets, mobile carrier SoftBank is reportedly about to lose its exclusive domestic distribution rights for the iPhone and has to share the market with competitor KDDI.
Nikkei Business Online claims it has learned that KDDI au, Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier with 33 million customers, will provide the iPhone 5 starting next year. If the rumored roll-out of the phone next month will become reality in Japan, too, this means that SoftBank has a few months before its closest competitor can start tapping into their most important segment. → Read More
InMobi, which bills itself as the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, has raised a whopping $200 million in funding from Softbank. The investment will come in two tranches: half this month, the other half in April 2012.
Softbank joins existing backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures as investors in the company, which recently acquired HTML5 ad builder Sprout. → Read More
The Yahoo Phone isn’t the only unusual handset Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank rolled out yesterday. SoftBank subscribers can soon lay their hands on another one, the 007SH KT [JP], which has two selling points: it’s designed like a clamshell feature phone (even though it runs on Android), and it has Hello Kitty written all over it. → Read More
Japan gets an Android-based “Yahoo Phone” [JP]: what may sound weird at first is actually not that surprising a news item, given that Yahoo is the country’s biggest website. Add to the fact that the country’s third biggest mobile carrier SoftBank, the provider of the phone, is Yahoo Japan’s biggest shareholder, and the emergence of such a handset makes even more sense. → Read More
If you thought Android and clamshell handsets won’t fit, think again: Sharp today introduced [JP] the so-called AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH, a flip phone running on Android 2.3. It’s the first of its kind (at least by a major company), but that’s not all the device has to offer. → Read More
Paper.li this morning announced new curation and management capabilities for its publishing platform, which basically allows individuals and publishers like HBO create personalized online newspapers by incorporating Twitter and Facebook streams into a familiar newspaper layout.
Paper.li earlier this year raised $2.1 million for its social news curation platform, and is today also announcing a welcome addition to its advisory board: former Huffington Post CEO and venture capitalist Eric Hippeau is joining Guy Kawasaki as an advisor to the company. → Read More
Paper.li this morning announced new curation and management capabilities for its publishing platform, which basically allows individuals and publishers like HBO create personalized online newspapers by incorporating Twitter and Facebook streams into a familiar newspaper layout.
Paper.li earlier this year raised $2.1 million for its social news curation platform, and is today also announcing a welcome addition to its advisory board: former Huffington Post CEO and venture capitalist Eric Hippeau is joining Guy Kawasaki as an advisor to the company. → Read More
Luxury group buying service Gilt Groupe is joining the mega-round bandwagon today with a new $138 million funding, led by Softbank, which took nearly half the round. Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital and Eastward Capital also participated, as did existing investors General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.
Gilt Groupe operates a growing family of flash-sales sites, including the original Gilt, Gilt Home, Gilt City, Gilt Children, Gilt MAN, and Jetsetter. Members are offered discounted prices for a limited time, which drives demand. Gilt was one of the earliest flash sale sites, and now there are dozens of copycats. (HauteLook, a smaller flash sale site, was acquired by Nordstrom for $270 million last February). → Read More
Japan’s telecommunications juggernaut SoftBank, the third largest mobile carrier of the country, had to register quite a lot of damage after the big earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. 3,800 of SoftBank’s base stations were knocked out, meaning no customer in the affected areas could make or receive calls via cell phones (the situation was similar with other carriers).
But it turned out that this damage wasn’t the main concern of SoftBank’s president and founder Masayoshi Son (pictured above). After visiting Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato in his prefecture on March 22 and seeing the real damage done, Son promised his company will offer free cell phones to all children who became orphans due to the earthquake. → Read More
PPLive, a Chinese online video company, has raised a monster Series D round from SoftBank, securing as much as $250 million.
With the investment, SoftBank has taken a 35% stake in PPLive, which offers China’s leading online streaming and VOD service PPTV. → Read More
Truth be told, I never heard of FRANCK MULLER before, but the (apparently quite famous) watch brand from Switzerland has designed a special case for the iPhone 4 that can now be pre-ordered in Japan. And as FRANCK MULLER is a luxury brand, each case will set you back a cool $1,270 [JP]. → Read More
Truth be told, I never heard of FRANCK MULLER before, but the (apparently quite famous) watch brand from Switzerland has designed a special case for the iPhone 4 that can now be pre-ordered in Japan. And as FRANCK MULLER is a luxury brand, each case will set you back a cool $1,270 [JP]. → Read More
As we reported multiple times over the past months, the iPhone is a hit in Japan. When compared to other Japanese phones, however, it lacks a few key features such as digital TV tuners or an e-wallet function. Provider SoftBank introduced a hardware solution for the former problem in 2008, and now there’s one for the latter, too. → Read More
A free iPad, how does that sound to you? You can get one, but you need to live in Japan and sign a two-year contract with SoftBank, the exclusive iPad provider in this country. The telecom behemoth announced a new pricing plan [JP] under which they fully subsidize a 16GB iPad (the Wi-Fi+3G model). → Read More
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