Internet
ò Rakuten, JapanÆs largest online shopping mall, disclosed its move to change its strategy to one that could see the group expand operations into the US and Europe. The company said the shift is seen as launching up to 30 new businesses. Analysts, however, criticized the restructuring move that would see Rakuten reduce its reliance on acquisitions as a means of expansion and set up a division focused on developing home-grown business ideas. RakutenÆs services range from online shopping, travel booking and brokerages. Rakuten has also been in prolonged talks with Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. for a possible alliance in areas such as Internet TV and e-commerce after Rakuten dropped its takeover attempt last year.
ò NEWS Corp announced that the company had begun testing its myspace.com internet chat website in Japan. The company said it would also launch myspace.com in Italy, with the groupÆs top official describing Myspace as an ôextremely effective form of advertisingö.
ò NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's biggest mobile phone operator, and Internet shopping mall Rakuten Inc. said they would offer online auctions for personal computers soon. The two companies announced last year, they will also offer a social network service as part of the tie-up in which DoCoMo would take a 40 percent stake, for 4.2 billion yen (US$36 million) in a new company, a spin-off of Rakuten's auction business. The alliance is seen as posing a challenge to Yahoo Japan Corp., the country's most popular web site and biggest online auction provider, as well as DoCoMo's smaller cell phone rivals KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which are offering new services such as digital TV and music downloads to attract users. Yahoo Japan is 41.0 percent owned by Softbank and 33.4 percent by Yahoo Inc.
Mobile/Wireless
ò Industry sources said that Sony Ericsson, the world's fourth-largest handset maker, plans to launch an ultra-slim, high-end Walkman camera phone in early 2007 to take on Motorola's blockbuster, the RAZR. The RAZR's runaway success has inspired Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to launch a copycat line of slim phones in the summer, which helped boost the South Korean firm's handset sales and margins in the third quarter. The source said that Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Japan's Sony Corp. and Sweden's Ericsson, would unveil its rival to the RAZR, dubbed "Ai", in March of 2007. Unconfirmed rumors about "Ai" and other new models from Sony Ericsson have also been circulating in various online blogs.
Media, Entertainment and Gaming
ò Nintendo announced its move to ship almost 400,000 units of its new Wii game console for its Japan launch in December. Under the move, Nintendo said it will be offering four times as many machines as Sony Corp did for its PlayStation 3 debut. The Japanese video game maker also said it plans to ship 1.5 million units of its hot-selling handheld game player, the DS, in December in Japan, doubling the availability from levels in recent months for the critical year-end shopping season. Sony, which sold nearly a million units of the earlier Play Station 2 console in the first three days of sales in Japan in 2000, shipped only 100,000 PS3s for the Japan debut last week.
Software
ò NEC Corporation and Sun Microsystems (Sun) announced an agreement to expand their alliance regarding HPC (High-Performance Computing) solution business in Europe and North America, a move that would enable a provision of NEC's SX series vector supercomputers with Sun Fire servers. The agreement involves NEC sharing its extensive experience and knowledge in the HPC solution business, in particular in terms of high-end supercomputer system integration and ISV application tuning, with Sun, in order to leverage NEC's market recognition. Under the agreement, NEC and Sun said they will share the system environment for application tuning, system evaluation and benchmarking between NEC's ATCC (Advanced Technical Computing Center, Houston, Texas) and Sun's Solution Center for HPC and cooperate in various ISV application-related activities. NEC and Sun are sharing market information in each region, and is aggressively developing a new customer base for optimized HPC solutions.
Hardware
ò Nippon Polaroid KK announced its entry to the flat-panel television market in Japan. With the move, the company said it sold liquid-crystal display TVs at less than half the price of major manufacturers. The company, the Japanese arm of US instant-camera producer Polaroid Corp., said it plans to undercut rivals by launching a 32-inch model with a price tag of about Ñ100,000 ($847) and a 20-inch model for around Ñ70,000 ($593). The company said the TVs will be sold through electronics retailer Kojima Co. from early December. Nippon Polaroid also revealed its plans to procure the TVs from a Taiwanese manufacturer, which was not named.
ò Hitachi Ltd. announced its aim to double its operating margin in four years and said that it is part of their option to pull out of flat TVs and hard disk drives if they continue to lose money. The company said it expects to generate profits from its power systems, flat TVs and HDDs next year as well as boost profitability through March 2009. If they fail to meet targets, Hitachi said it would consider pulling out of the three businesses even as the company revealed that it could also look for partnerships and acquisitions to turn them around. According to a JP Morgan analyst Hitachi does not like abandoning businesses, but also had a track record of missing its mid-term goals. Earlier, Hitachi said it would strengthen its HDD business by increasing production capacity in China and Thailand and by increasing its line-up of new HDDs using vertical magnetic recording techniques, which increase storage. The company also said it would boost shares through bigger displays and that it would increase its line-up of liquid crystal display TVs through an existing venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and Toshiba Corp.
Telecommunications
ò Yano Research Institute Ltd. (Yano), a leading marketing research and consulting firm in Japan, said that the size of the total fiber-optic access systems market has reached Ñ76.2 billion ($645 million). The market is comprised of Ñ65.5 billion ($555 million) for PON (Passive Optical Network) systems and Ñ10.7 billion ($90.7 million) for MC (Media Converters), respectively. The sharp increase in the number of subscribers to FTTH, which almost doubled in fiscal 2005, has apparently contributed to the growth of the market. The study said that the biggest factor that has contributed to the increase of FTTH subscribers is the lowered fees for optical IP phone service with 0AB-J numbers (conventional telephone numbers) portability and lowered monthly fees for broadband Internet access services. Most major telecommunication carriers commented that approximately 60 to 70 percent of new subscribers had concurrently subscribed to their optical IP phone services, emphasizing the cost for "FTTH and IP phone" is now lower than the cost for "ADSL and conventional analog phones," in terms of monthly basic fees. Yano estimated that the total number of FTTH subscribers would exceed 27 million by the year of 2011 with over 3 million annual net increases of FTTH subscribers each year up to 2011.
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