NPD2005

2005-03-23T22:02:00.000-08:00

Smartphone with WiFi functions.

Samsung goes forward again and introduces a smartphone with Wireless LAN functions and many many other cool things.

Learn more...

NTT's Two Local Units Eye Lower Profits Next FY

2005-03-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

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March 01, 2005NTT's Two Local Units Eye Lower Profits Next FY
TOKYO (Dow Jones)--NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp., the two regional arms of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (9432), said Tuesday they expect their profits to fall significantly next fiscal year due to weaker revenue from their traditional fixed-line phone services.
Their outlooks underscore the severe business conditions surrounding the Japanese telecommunications giant. Cutthroat price competition with rivals in the domestic telecom market - KDDI Corp. (9433) and Softbank Corp.'s (9984) Japan Telecom - has recently forced NTT to cut the base fee for its fixed-line telephone service.
NTT East projects a parent pretax profit of Y25 billion and parent operating revenue of Y2.012 trillion for the fiscal year starting April 1, compared with its outlook for this fiscal year of a pretax profit of Y90 billion and operating revenue of Y2.152 trillion.
NTT West estimates a pretax profit of Y15 billion and operating revenue of Y1.966 trillion next fiscal year, sharply lower than its forecasts for this fiscal year of a pretax profit of Y78 billion and operating revenue of Y2.087 trillion.
NTT, the holding company of the telecom group, said it expects a pretax profit of Y145 billion next fiscal year, down Y5 billion from its forecast profit for this fiscal year.
All the figures are on a parent basis.
The weaker projections by the two local carriers will likely weigh on NTT's group earnings next fiscal year as NTT faces many challenges.
Japan's fixed-line phone market has been shrinking, while the race for customers for broadband Internet services is fierce due to aggressive pricing by rivals including Softbank. Moreover, NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437), NTT's profit engine, has also been forced to cut its mobile service fees as a result of rising competition.
In an effort to keep ahead in the country's increasingly competitive communications industry, NTT is focusing on next-generation optical fiber network communications operations.
"We will promote the customer shift to IP services," NTT East President Satoshi Miura said at a news conference.
Due to lower phone fees and faster data communications speeds, demand for IP, or Internet Protocol, based services via optical fiber networks is growing rapidly in Japan. Such services include IP-based phone services and Internet access services for computer users.
But revenue from these new services isn't growing much yet. NTT East said it expects IP-related service revenue to increase by Y82 billion next fiscal year. But that growth is much smaller than the projected revenue drop of Y210 billion in its traditional fixed-line services.
The two regional units also said they plan combined capital expenditure of Y780 billion next fiscal year. That's a slight reduction from the Y790 billion in spending they expect for the current fiscal year.
NTT East said it plans capital expenditures totaling Y400 billion next fiscal year, unchanged from its estimate for this fiscal year. NTT West said it plans to invest Y380 billion next fiscal year, down from the Y390 billion it expects to have spent this fiscal year.
Of the total expenditures, both NTT East and NTT West said they aim to boost spending related to fiber-optic communications. They plan their combined outlays on optical fiber networks to grow to Y330 billion next business year, compared with an expected Y290 billion this fiscal year.
Copyright 2005 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. All rights reserved.

Not really related to the topic, but...

2005-02-20T07:39:00.000-08:00

Can u imagine that u meet some person on the street, and right after a handshake u know about this person all necessary info?

Here is the article about it. The prototype is ready already. Commercial product will be available in 2006.

http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20050218D18JFA07.htm

Nikkei Convergence Conference

2005-02-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

A conference held in Tokyo this month, covered a great deal of information on convergence.

http://www.nikkei.co.jp/summit/english/

NTT DoCoMo Sigmarion3

2005-02-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

NTT DoCoMo Sigmarion3 (DoCoMo's handheld PC for mobile users to read and write messages) was stopped to produce, according to web-site of NTT docomo
1. This article is old one that announced Sigmarion3 as new product
http://www.nttdocomo.com/presscenter/pressreleases/press/pressrelease.html?param[no]=236
2. NTT DoCoMo’s Japanese web-site that introduce Sigmarion3
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/products/sigmarion3/communication/index.html

The reason why Black Berry can not advance into Japanese market

2005-02-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/0412/28/news017.html
Japanese Article: The reason why BlackBerry can not advance into Japanese market
There are no mobile phone companies that want to tie up with RIM (BlackBerry)
1. Japanese mobile internet contents are mainly for entertainment not for business.
2. NTT docomo, Japanese leading mobile company focuses on young people, so they lag behind in developing business contents.
3. Japanese business people carry on portable laptop to read their business mails, or transfer their business mail to mobile phone.
4. NTT docomo is developing new mobile that can access business mail network like BlackBerry

Korean MFC article analysis

2005-02-01T19:31:00.000-08:00

In June 2004 more than 11 million people households had fixed-line broadband = +74%. In Korea mobile calls cost 8-10 times than local fixed-line calls, so it could means 20% reduction in the bill.

The Korean Government is pushing the “WiBro” service, which is a OFDMA-TDD for the 2.3Ghz band that enables wireless broadband access with limited mobility. It offers data rates of 2-4 Mbps per user at a range of up to 60 km. They planned to offer VOD services, games, multimedia instant messaging and music on demand. Wibro will be launch in 2006.

South Korea is working in planning the 4G standards. 4G will be a fusion of different technologies such as low-tier WiBro, VoIP and cellular.

MFC, Is there really the demand?

2005-02-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

My Comments about an article in "mobile Communications International" magazine
Dec/Jan 04/05
Pages 26,27

Article title: One Vision.
By Sean Jackson

He describe the current situation of the MFC from two perspectives. One is the operators and vendors perspective and the other is the customer´s perspective.
Until now the customer prefer to have only one bill of all the communication services they use, irrespective the device and network. The operators and vendors say that is what the customers are demanding.
He mentions a paper produced by wireless consultant Northstream, that say the fixed-mobile substitution is irreversible caused by three factors:

Increasingly mobile lifestyles.
Decreasing mobile voice services
Increased interest of service providers for the development of FMC

He describes many technologies some operators are implementing now all around the world, however he conclude the real driver behind FMC is consumer demand and not technology.

His conclusion is: " There isn´t a single application in the world that truly needs mobility. Voice doesn´t need mobile to work. It worked for 80 years without it-but now it´s easier. So what mobile IP aims to achieve for the end user is to make it much easier for them to connect to the network. They just want to fire up the laptop or other device and connect."

Based on this comment, I conclude that for this project we have to search some value the customer could obtain from the FMC, the technology to implementing it will be there.

Luis.

Wi-Fi, Cellular Convergence Subscribers to Reach 55 Million by 2010

2005-01-27T06:35:00.000-08:00

Some information from Nikkei Electronic Asia about the worldwide market demand of cellular converged services.

Made

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com.hk/newsarchivedetail/daily_news/000224

Convergence Strategy Counters Substitution Threats

2005-01-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

Here's a research from Forrester dated Dec 2003. It gives a very good overview...

http://www.forrester.com/Research/PDF/0,5110,33145,00.pdf

Korea Mobile-fixed experience and plan

2005-01-25T08:10:00.000-08:00

Korea's mobile data market boosted by convergence of fixed-mobile
Here you can find information the way Korea is working and the statistics they already have with this m-f convergence, is interesting the rol the Korean Government has on it:

http://www.informatm.com/marlin/20001001561/ARTICLEVIEW/mp_channelid/null&mp_articleid=20017295464&mp_pubcode=EO?proceed=true&MarEntityId=1106558264602&entHash=1001d1d8289&UType=true

Control your PC over mobile

2005-01-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

Here is another article where we can see that convergence is on the way.

Even though the implementation seemed to me a little bit awkward in the case explained here, I think there are a lot of potentials in this area.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/index.cfm?go=news.view&news=4466

Kick-start

2005-01-23T05:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a kickstart to get into it. Guys who know about telecom and can lead us to the important issues, please do so..
http://www.telecomasia.net/telecomasia/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=92624