Ludovic Copéré

i-mode: wireless services à la Japanese

I first heard about i-mode sometimes around in February 2000, a since-then forgotten time when we Europeans were struggling with more-or-less crappy and unreliable mobile data access with the then glorified WAP service. Back then, the very ability of downloading-as-you-go and running fully-featured games and and having access to diversified content and information source from a click on your clamshell phone was at the very least extremely intringuing. And seeing over 5 million users in Japan at that time (growing to 42 million in Q1/2005 according to NTT DoCoMo) made it obvious that the Far East knew something in how to make mobile services technically viable and economically profitable. All of that starting with a startlingly simple yet profoundly new thinking from the mobile network operator: "to become profitable ourselves, we have to motivate and enrich the content providers", as explained by Takeshi Natsuno, the chief designer of the i-mode service at NTT DoCoMo.

Fast-forward to 2004, after having experienced i-mode myself in Japan (and in France, through Bouygue Telecom's licensing of the technology) and while studying about wireless and mobile network architectures in Sweden, I wrote a synthesis report on the technological and business characteristics of the i-mode ecosystem, which I'm happy to make available under a Creative Commons license.

If you are interested on the subject, I recommend that you read by NTT DoCoMo's own view of the service. Written by Natsuno san, The i-mode Wireless Ecosystem and i-mode Strategy are two  excellent sources of information on how this radically new approach to mobile services emerged and managed to cross the chasm, both in Japan and now on a global level. And for a constantly updated insight on current developments, have a close look at the i-mode Business Strategy blog, a very informative source to track the evolution of i-mode on an international level.

3G and Wireless convergence in Japan

Forget about dual or triple-band phones: DoCoMo is (once again) leading the way in Japan with its new mobile phone, the N900iL, which sports both 3G access (FOMA - Freedom of Mobile Access) and Wireless LAN connectivity (the same 802.11b standard used in offices as well as private and public hotspots).

Named PASSAGE DUPLE, this dual access opens up the way for a better integration of mobile phones in the professional sector: whenever Wi-Fi is available, VoIP calls can be made, as well as "presence" services (like Instant Messaging, chat, file transfer). When out of the office, the device can switch back to the (almost omnipresent in Japan) 3G coverage and be used as a traditional phone.

I can't help but relate this to last Friday's seminar at Wireless@KTH, when Magnus Melander of Brainheat Capital  talked to us about the opportunity Wi-Fi has of being a neutral ground between the telecom world and the datacom world - a broadly applicable technology on which new, less-vertically integrated business models can be established on both sides. In that sense, DoCoMo's strategy makes a lot of sense: in 1999, it brought i-mode, the first usable Internet services to a Japanese population that was at the time quite behind in its adoption of web surfing and computer-based internet. 42 million customers after that, it focuses this time on the corporate sector and aims at leveraging on the growing wireless adoption there.

A move to follow closely for sure; now, what I really want to see is Skype for DoCoMo phones!

Investing in Japan?

On Thursday, I listened to representatives from the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) - more precisely from JETRO Stockholm . It was interesting to hear an insider point of view, as what I had been reading was very pessimistic and harsh on Japan's ability to fully open up the way it should today, in terms of foreign direct investments (FDI), or should I rather say, inward investments, as reaching outward is perhaps what Japan has been most successful with in the past 50 years.

And indeed, present reality can seem quite grim in some aspects: as of 2003, the outward/inward FDI ratio was 3.74:1 in Japan. And most of it comes from larger corporations, like the success story of L'Oréal. The most impressive move still remains Renault's rescue mission to put back Nissan on shape. As noted by BBC News this week, "[as] a result, it is now Japan's most profitable car company, posting a $7.29bn profit in year end of March 2004", in a striking difference to the Mitsubishi - DaimlerChrysler fiasco.

Nevertheless, while heavy industry and manufacturing are still thriving as one of Japan's symbol of technological and industrial prowess, it also stigmatizes the one critical issue that has been preventing the country from a quicker return from the bubble-burst of the 90's: the poorly rewarded and supported smaller businesses and service sectors. Seeing Japan at the bottom of the entrepreneurial ranking in the 2003 study of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is not a surprise at all in this context (I could also add that seeing France as the lame duck in the ranking is not surprising either).

However Japan does not remain idle in front of such situation: Prime Minister Koizumi launched the Invest Japan program in 2001, with the ambitious goal of doubling the 2001 figure of inward investment (6,632 billion Yen) by 2006. To accomplish that, a special focus has been put on complementing Japan's natural business assets (technological powerhouse, large consumer base) with new regional cluster policies, for instance in Sendai, Fukuoka and Kobe, following the Triple Helix concept of combining higher education, research-oriented industries and public agencies to reach for a better dynamics.

In parallel, Japan has begun to understand its skills in soft innovations: anime, video games, mobile services and digital culture are very big in Japan, and the country excels at exporting them. It goes far beyond the anecdotic niche, and Japan is setting itself as the "land of the cool". As Joi Ito notes, "the export of trendy culture like anime is strong and that Japanese biggest asset is it's 'cool'".

Another interesting fact mentioned by JETRO is that Japan sees "business" investments closely related with "tourist" ones: in parallel to the Invest Japan program, the government has launched a Visit Japan campaign, with the goal of doubling annual inbound tourists from 5 million in 2003 to 10 million in 2010.

QR code generator

A quick follow-up to my previous post: I've stumbled onto a nifty webpage that generates QR codes. Who will be the first to decode the picture on top of this post? ;-)

Parking, 3G style

As reported by Akihabara News, Japan is once again on top of the technological curve and ICT diffusion in everyday's life. Honestly, what could be more commonplace and anecdotic than the immutable ritual of parking you car? That is, opening the window, taking a piece of printed cardboard you're likely to lose in your pockets; and then, after queuing for paying (if the machine is not down), rushing again to your car before the "exit" timer has expired....

Well this painstaking reality could soon become a thing of the past, thanks to FeliCa, a technology originally developed by Sony. Basically, it is a contactless chip, that holds more information than on the credit cards' chips, with the added advantage of being contactless, as the names implies: just swipe it in front of a wireless reader and that's it (similar to RFID tags).

Now, the neat thing that those chips are integrated into NTT DoCoMo's latest third generation (FOMA) phones - such as the brand new F900iC. It didn't take long for Park24, a large parking company in Japan, to take benefit of that and launch a FeliCa-powered parking area next to the NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Tower (how appropriate!) in Shibuya, starting October 1st.

In a nutshell, when entering the parking lot, you swipe your 3G phone at the entrance beacon (cf. picture at the top), that way you can pay for the exact time you have been parked. But wait, that's not all! You also get a printed 2D barcode on you receipt.. Those little pixelated squares are (of course) understood by your camera-phone, and upon taking a picture of it, you are redirected to a surveillance camera pointing at the direction of your parked car.
Well, considering the average crime rate in Japan, I don't know if it's really worth the technological paraphernalia, but it's at least a very convincing showcasing of Japan's mastery in mobile, user-pushed and market-driven services.

I now remember how I did find Mint's parking payment in Sweden through SMS already way ahead of its time (compared to lagging France, that is). Different cultures, different adoption curves...

No more DRM in Tokyo

... well almost: Avex, one of the biggest record labels in Japan (producing among other things Ayumi Hamasaki - the local Britney Spears, and hundreds of Eurobeat CDs - isn't it, Eiji ;-)) will drop producing DRM-protected CDs starting September 22th. It may not sound important, but Avex had been one of the first adopter of this practice back in 2002; while I don't have nothing at all against DRM per se (Apple's Playfair and Real's Helix systems works well), I remember buying such CDs while in Japan and their protection scheme was really annoying, with a very crappy embeded software player, on top of not being that effective at all.

And as a follow-up, Avex has joined with Sony Music Japan and other Japanese labels in the digital music store Mora, a somewhat good piece of news tainted by the fact that the store uses an ATRAC3 codec (which is not that surprising, given the popularity of MiniDiscs in Japan). Still a couple of interoperability lessons for them to learn...

Via Slashdot Japan

Information Technology in Sweden and Japan

On Monday I was invited to an extremely interesting seminar on the uses and implactions of Information Technology (IT) both in Sweden and Japan. Organized by ITPS (Institutet för tillväxtpolitiska studier, i.e. Swedish Institute for Growth Policy Studies) , in cooperation with VINNOVA (the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems), NUTEK (the Swedish Business Development Agency) and STEM (the Swedish Energy Agency), it gave a broad overview of the innovations and challenges in the two regions.

First were several presentations hilighting the state of the art in Japan in respect to IT:
- JEITA (the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association) shed some light on the sucessful business models in the Japanese IT industry over the next 10 years : building on Japan's exceptional hardware, industrial and Intellectual Property assets, the country should strive towards an ubiquitous IT environment (From e-Life to u-Life - from electronics to ubiquity), as a part of the governmental policy of e-Japan. Through the convergence of sectors in which Japan has a strong presence (such as digital home appliances and mobile terminals) can the country grow as a leader in user-targeted IT innovations and uses.
- Representatives from Total Life and ALICE Forum explained the developments on the newest housing network equipments in Japan and the processes for standardizing and spreading its use. In comparison to what is being done in Sweden (for instance Svenska Bostäder's fiber-to-the-home city network in Vällingby), Japan seems more inclined towards smart house innovations, such as remote and centralized control, monitoring and surveillance. To illustrate this, we were shown an example of a wall socket featuring power, ethernet, TV and sensor access alltogether (pictured here).
- Speaking of sensors, the presentation from IPSquare underlined the impressive innovations occuring in Japan: they have developped a single-chip solution for processing information from versatile physical sensors (temperature, humidity, CO2 level...) and sending it over an IP network using standard protocols. thereby opening the way towards swarms of sensor-based intelligent agents.
- Showing that IT is diffusing itself into every economic sector in Japan, the presentation from SHIMIZU, a 200-year old construction group, underlined the influence of IT throughout the engineering process, with examples such as Mobile Phone Positioning System, Structural Health Monitoring System (important in earthquake-prone Japan), and Biotope Monitoring System.

After that, the seminar shifted towards IT in Sweden, with a special focus on governmental policy and social issues:
- Aiming for An Information Society for All, the Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication explained Sweden's e-Government strategy, consisting of a specific structure and activity plan focusing on five prioritized areas: education, healthcare, broadband infrastructure, economic growth, and IT culture.
- Very logically, the focus was then put on the issue the ability to create a democratic information society for everyone, with a reflection on going from thinking IT as a tool for Democracy to Democracy in the Information Society. This would entail deep structural changes in the way democracy runs and is perceived by the citizens, but this is a far-reaching and long-term view that could position the Information Society as the founder for a renewed and updated democracy, just like the Industrial Revolution crafted the values and systems in which we are currently evolving.

As a perfect synthesis to bridge the views, assets and issues in Sweden and Japan, the seminar was concluded by an insightful reflection on what makes Sweden an Japan simultanesouly similar and different in the IT world. Both strong R&D and innovcation clusters with a strong home market, the two countries yet subtly differ in their respective strengths and weaknesses: international outlook, conceptual thinking and multidisciplinary thinking in Sweden, quicker Time To Market, playfulness of the domestic market and market push in Japan, to higlight a few.

All in all, this even was a great occasion to get a more global vision on what is driving IT in terms of innovation, markets and policies, thanks to the inspiring people present that day.

Japan vs. Korea (or the other way around)

No, this is not about an hypothetical football match between the two asian countries, but rather a short post on a geopolitical issue making waves back and forth between Japan and Korea: the naming of the sea on the eastern coast of the Eurasian continent (hey, I'm being careful here, it's precisely the name that's at stake). So, to summarize, Japan has been advocating that this piece of water should be named Sea of Japan (as it is de facto in most western maps today), while Korea pushes for the East Sea denomination. Scholar battles ensue.

I was aware of that already, but during my course on Japan and the International Political Economy given by the European Institute for Japanese Studies, much diplomatic and official attention was said to be focused on the naming dispute. After some googling, I managed to find the two eminently official versions and arguments, on each side of the Sea:
- Japan has a dedicated page on its Ministry of Foreign Affairs site. There, several documents and pamphlets try to make their point in convincing of the rightfullness of Japan's claim.
- This is however nothing compared to the heavy artillery Korea has decided to use: quite proeminently placed in the starting page of the country's official portal, a 27' video transforms the claim into an almost-Hollywoodian attempt: american-sounding off voice, dramatic music, and a lot of cheap picture effects (while not forgetting some deliciously diplomatic rounding such as [the Sea's name] was intentionally erased by an outside force).

Anyhow, time to get back to a few more pages of 日本語初歩...

Google News in Japan(ese)

During a casual checking at Google's newspage, I noticed that they finally opened a Japanese version of their automated newscrawling engine. They also have started a Korean version, but I'm not really versed into the joys of Hangûl writing, so I will just say 凄いだよ！

PSP in motion

The Yomiuri Shimbun has a video of Sony's next gaming machine, the PSP (Playstation Portable). For its first foray in the mobile gaming segment, it looks pretty good (and having Gran Turismo 4 on the palm of you hand sounds rather tempting).