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Japan: Market Development and Challenges

The Japanese have indulged their enthusiasm for technology and innovation to create the world's most advanced mobile market. Compact, highly specified, feature-rich keitai (mobile handsets, pronounced "kay-tie") give 21 million 3G customers access to a vast range of information, entertainment and personalisation services. In this case study, we:

• Present the Japanese mobile market, and summarise recent developments
• Introduce the Japanese customer, and their expectations, attitudes and usage of mobile services
• Cover a range of advanced non-voice services, including music and video services, personal messaging, location- and community-based games, mobile TV, targeted advertising services, and "mobile wallet" applications
• Summarise tariff structures from all three operators, and present a tiered flat-rate tariff plan that has livened up the 3G market
• Examine the Japanese approach to handset development and distribution

Despite technology and service adoption that is far ahead of mainstream 2.5G operators in Europe, USA and elsewhere, Japanese operators are facing the same pressures. Competition in the domestic market has intensified: service revenues, ARPU levels and tariff prices have fallen over the past 18 months, and all three operators expect this trend to continue. Mobile Number Portability, a rumoured new market entrant and constrained spectrum may also play central roles in the next few months. This report concludes with a summary of challenges for Japanese operators in 2005 and onwards.

Price: EUR 1,250.00 / GBP 1,050.00

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1
Overview
1
2
The Japanese Mobile Market
2
2.1
Market Statistics
2
2.2
NTT DoCoMo
4
2.3
KDDI
5
2.4
Vodafone KK
6
3
Japanese Customer Profile
7
3.1
Attitudes to the Mobile Internet
8
4
Services for the Consumer
10
4.1
Mobile Internet: i-mode, EZweb & Vodafone live!
10
4.2
Personal messaging: e-mail, emoji...and spam
11
4.3
"What's new?"
12
4.4
Music Services
13
4.5
Video Services
14
4.6
Video-calling
15
4.7
Mobile TV
15
4.8
Advertising Services
16
4.9
Games
17
4.10
LBS and Location-Aware Games
19
4.11
Non-gaming Applications
21
4.11.1
"Mobile Wallet" - 'FeliCa'
21
4.11.2
Micropayments: edy
22
4.11.3
QR Codes
22
4.11.4
Mapping
23
5
Tariffs
24
5.1
DoCoMo
24
5.2
KDDI
26
5.3
Vodafone
28
6
Handsets & Distribution
29
6.1
An Operator-Controlled Market
29
6.2
Distribution & Subsidies
30
6.3
Handsets
30
6.3.1
KDDI au design project: talby
31
7
Challenges
32
7.1
Spectrum Limitations, New Entrants & Mobile Number Portability
32
7.2
Regulation of Prepay
33
7.3
DoCoMo
33
7.4
KDDI
34
7.5
Vodafone
35