Forget Madonna and her 278 mobile promotion deals for ‘Hard Candy’. The world’s biggest mobile music star is a 20-year-old R&B singer from Japan called Thelma Aoyama. Want proof? Her single ‘Sobaniirune’ has sold 3.4 million ringtones, two million full-track mobile downloads, and 1.6 million ringback tones. That’s seven million mobile downloads in total! The song’s apparently about her long-lost boyfriend - who’s presumably feeling a bit silly now, thinking about Thelma’s bulging bank balance. Interestingly, the song was released as a ringtone last December, BEFORE coming out as an actual single. That said, its sales were also boosted by its inclusion in a TV ad for Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo - presumably the equivalent in sales-bumping terms to being used for an Apple ad here in the West. Which makes Thelma the Japanese equivalent of Feist or the Ting Tings. Except richer.
Tag Archive for 'NTT DoCoMo'
My God, can you imagine catching a whiff of Crazy Frog whenever your phone rings? Thankfully, Jamster’s amphibian has nothing to do with the latest technology trial by Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo. Instead, it’s all about ‘mobile fragrance communication’, with your phone emitting smells to accompany certain audiovisual content that you download.
Here’s how they explain it:
“The Fragrance Playlists are downloaded from the i-mode mobile website of sister company NTT DoCoMo. Using the phone’s infrared port, the fragrance data is transferred to a device that has been loaded with a cartridge of essences, or base fragrances. The device, a smaller, lighter and more stylish version of the previous model, then mixes the specific fragrances and emits them as the user enjoys the A/V content played back on their phone.”
Mad, eh? DoCoMo is running a trial this month with 20 users, but it seems set on a commercial launch whatever they say, since it’s accepting applications from Japanese companies who want to develop content and applications using the technology. Examples are ringtones, music and horoscopes. Find out more (if you read Japanese) on this blog.
It’s the sort of thing that encourages journalists to phone up for some personal trainer time on their return to the UK, but at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo was demoing a prototype of what it referred to as the Wellness handset. Yes, apparently “You too can have the perfect body,” something this phone will help with thanks to its combination of high-speed pedometer, body fat monitor, heartrate monitor and bad breath monitor - none of which you’d really want to be tested on during a tradeshow. Nevertheless, the chunky-looking slider (with healthy-looking demo girl) was on hand to remind us we’re overweight, unfit and could do with some tictacs. Thanks NTT DoCoMo.
Japan has traditionally been the most advanced mobile market in the world, but right now it’s lagging behind the US, UK, Germany and France in terms of getting the iPhone. You can’t buy Apple’s handset in Japan yet, although that could soon change.
Apple is reportedly in talks with two separate operators there: market leader NTT DoCoMo, and third-placed Softbank. DoCoMo appears to be in pole position, since its president has already met with Steve Jobs (and thus presumably encountered Steve’s Reality Distortion Field that makes giving up a chunk of iPhone voice and data revenues seem sensible).
I could be wrong here, but isn’t one of the things about Japan that the operators only run 3G networks? If so, I’m not sure what that means for the resolutely 2.5G iPhone - would Apple have to wait to launch in Japan until it has a 3G iPhone ready to go?
(via ITWire)
Luckily earthquakes are not something that us Brits ever really have to deal with but for the Japanese they are a regular occurrence. So it is surprising that it has taken the inhabitants of the tech savvy capital of the universe this long to come up with a mobile application that warns of their occurrence.
The Japanese mobile company NTT DoCoMo has created something that it calls Area Mail, an application that provides quick emergency reports delivered to mobiles that are in a specific danger area when seismic activity begins.
It certainly could be a life saving service, and the fact that the service only alerts those who are in immediate danger rather than panic those who are not at risk is a very clever feature.
(Via Tech-on)
