Comments on: Nao that’s a nice PDA! “E-mobile” the new runner in the keitai race

By: Igor Berger

Igor Berger — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:33:41 +0000

I love Matushita Nao, she really turnes me on! Man I am living in Osaka and there are tines of hot girls, but they all playing hard to get!

I get an email address, phone number, even take their purrty picture, but alll, that happens we exchange a few emails and it fizels out…

I did get lucky with an older one, but she was hot looked 25 but was 40..:) Yaba Daba Do.

Cheers,
Igor

P.S. Stippy you have some nice looking Japanese lady friends, what is your secret man?

By: Igor Berger

Igor Berger — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:37:12 +0000

Guys I’ve just come back to Japan after going to China and Thailand and I have done a little analysis on different ways to conect your laptop to the Internet via Wi-Fi free or paid and via mobile data card.

http://www.travelinasia.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5322

From what I see Willcom has the best plan today but other cariers will be catching up soon in terms of price…

I still like the free Wi-Fi notion but will require some leg work to find the hotspot access points.

Looking for those access points will give me the reason to mingle with the locals!
Is it not what we here for.

By: Sotei-guy

Sotei-guy — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 01:02:26 +0000

don’t get your hopes up Steve88. The iphone is a little bit old school in that it only works on GSM networks. You’ll have to wait until version 2.0 for an iphone that works on 3G. So you can probably buy one if you go America but don’t expect to be able to use it. The best alternative is to sign up to softbank and get a free ipdo in the interim…

By: steve88

steve88 — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 23:53:48 +0000

Anyone know when the iPhones coming to Japan, and with which carrier? How can I get one?!

By: Gold

Gold — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 02:47:19 +0000

I had a first touch of this new toy yesterday. Even though the service doesn’t start till April 1, they are taking orders. The guy told me that the initial reaction has been very good. I was pretty impressed also. For one, it looks very smooth. the slide-out is smooth, the keys solid for typing etc. Ie it wasn’t a flimsy piece of equipment and usability was good. The most impressive thing was that the screen is a touch screen! You can select anything by touching the screen, and the 6 little icons on the right hand side of the screen (net, mail, home etc) were touch also! Very cool. On the negative side, it has one of those stupid pointer sticks clipped into the back. When was the last time that wasnt the first thing to get lost? It comes with the full Office Mobile package, and within the limited coverage area the speeds are expected to be extremely good. It is marketed as a specifically “not voice” product, and when I asked if skype would work on it, he repeated the mantra. He did say however that if I plugged in a mike and headphones, that there is no reason skype wouldnt work:) (And he denied, with a grin, a rumour, that the forthcoming keitias will be loaded with skype for the IP software.) The only question he couldnt answer was when I said that if its so cheap for unlimited access, are you going to be able to make any money out of this? “Saaa..”

By: Sotei-guy

Sotei-guy — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:04:42 +0000

Keitaigoddess:
I would agree with Robert on that. Most keitai mobile content is designed (and only accessible) by the carrier that provides those menus. Just as you can’t access the official imode menu’s with your au keitai, it will be impossible with EM. Most of the carriers (espceially DoCoMo) have tried so hard to keep their users loyal to their “official” content that they have charged different (read “higher”) rates for accessing “real” internet pages vs. their own (even when you sign up for pakehodai). The beauty of EM is that you don’t have to worry about such restrictions any more.

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:52:47 +0000

KeitaiGoddess:

I would imagine not, considering that most mobile contents are aimed at mobile phone users, not PDA users.

By: KeitaiGoddess

KeitaiGoddess — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:45:22 +0000

It is not able to access and use the mobile content menu though does it?

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:04:02 +0000

Personally I am a big fan of Sharp electronics, and have used their phones for a majority of the time I’ve been in Japan. They have gathered a bit of a following among the phone fan crowd especially for their earlier models they released through Vodafone, which were hacked and made useable outside of Japan (early Vodafone 800/900 series phones). They’ve especially been popular among the Asian crowd coming from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and so on. While I have felt the connect is tenuous at best, a large reason why Vodafone/Softbank’s high end Sharp series have not had GSM roaming is to stop the supposed reselling of white rom models abroad.

Then, with that said, to broadly broadly speculate, the inclusion of former Singtel execs and a bottomless money pit for backing… While I haven’t followed E-Mobile that closely as of yet (although I plan to from now on) I haven’t heard of any plans for their global/international/roaming or what not. With this kind of foreign investment, I would venture to speculate that they would like to cultivate the phone maker market to produce models that will eventually be able to be sold abroad. Again, a very tenuous connection I know, but the one area that the Keitai makers in Japan are seriously losing out is on international competitiveness with their models. Of course this comes again as Japan is also isolated in the system that they use but…

I can’t tell you how many people I know who would love to take their snazzy Japanese mobile back to their home country to use it there, but due to model hard locking is impossible. Outside of the aforementioned Sharp models, the only other models that I have heard to be unlockable for use abroad are earlier Toshiba models. One thing we can thank Vodafone for is the actual GSM roaming push for their phones. Unfortunately, even if they make GSM phones, makers have gotten wise about making it hard to hack firmware and unlock their phones. I believe the last Sharp that was unlockable was the 903SH, and 904SH and 705SH has proven unlockable.

Anyways, this is only pure speculation, and I can’t put much into it as voice services won’t even start until next year. Perhaps this is a way to allow foreign investors to break in to the Japanese telecommunications market. Vodafone tried, but is remained a distant third. Now Softbank, with Son at the helm is going the Japanese raised in capitalistic corporate America approach (albeit, he’s Korean descended).

If Chow’s inclusion is a veiled attempt to bring Japan into the Singtel group though… seeing as how Vodafone bowed out, and they’re supposedly the biggest group in the world, then I have a hard time seeing Singtel succeeding where they failed. If they succeed though, they have the possibility of adding Japanese makers behind them for phones to be pushed through to their other markets.

Pure speculation though, and coming from someone who thinks Japanese makers could make a killing if they marketed their phones in other regions.

By: Sotei-guy

Sotei-guy — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:43:49 +0000

It’s funny you should mention that Freddie F.F. I’d been looking at the same data although it was the Temasek stake that surprised me. Temasek is the private equity arm of the Singapore government and if that isn’t a bottomless wallet (in political terms, not just economical terms) then I don’t know what is.

It looks as though they’ve started to pull strings too. A week ago EM announced that a guy called Lucas Chow will be joining the board. As a former CEO of Singtel Mobile he is a pretty punchy hire and he’s clearly come from the Temasek route. Robert will be interested to hear this, but apparently Chow also spent a bunch of years in charge of corporate clients at SingTel (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

I don’t see a lot that Goldman can really add to the equation - except for maybe cash when EM burns through their existing pile.