Goin' Mobile Japan

TrendWatch: Mobile phones will be required to be equipped with GPS in 2007

As we saw in a couple of articles in the last month’s issue (10/18-Navitime and 10/25-MIC) and this month’s issue (11/24-DoCoMo), Japan’s mobile industry will be preparing for a possible regulation which will require all mobile phones to be GPS equipped starting in April 2007. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications originally drafted this regulation because recently many emergency calls have originated from mobile phones but police or fire departments have had difficulty in locating those callers. Likewise, in the US the FCC also requests that mobile phone manufacturers equip GPS functions for all new mobile phones from January 2006, and the European Commission is now considering doing the same. In Japan, KDDI au was the pioneer of GPS implementation of its mobile phones back in December 2001, and now today most of its 3G phones are equipped with GPS. DoCoMo and Vodafone started shipping GPS phones this fall, so now all of the 3 major wireless carriers are now developing competing hardware features as well as services using GPS in terms of a business model.

The following gives an introduction of GPS related hardware and services for each carrier:

DoCoMo

DoCoMo introduced the SA700iS and a service called i-area that allows users to determine their current location and receive navigation services. DoCoMo also released the SA800iS (Kid’s Phone) series with a GPS service called "imadoco search” (Where are you now?) for the children’s market. The service allows parents to locate the whereabouts of their children at any time. (Please see the article on 11/24).

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/p_s/products/foma/gps.html (English site)

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/p_s/products/foma/gps.html (English site)
 

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/kids_phone/sa800i/index.html (Japanese site)

KDDI

As mentioned above, KDDI au started their GPS service much earlier than the others and GPS functions are now almost considered a standard feature on their phones and services in its CDMA 1x and 1xWIN networks.

Services include but are not limited to: walking navigation, driving navigation, kids’ locator, family/phone locator and map/transportation services.
 

http://www.au.kddi.com/english/product/index.html (English site)

http://www.au.kddi.com/ezweb/service/navi.html (Japanese site)

Vodafone

Vodafone released Vodafone Live! Navi in October and has lined up services with a number of providers. The 903T phones are preinstalled with Zenrin’s Its-mo Navi so that users can start the navigation system easily. A unique aspect of the service is that not only users can use the navigation services in Japan, but also they can currently use the navigation services in the U.K., Italy, Vatican City, Netherlands, Spain, Canary Is., San Marino, Germany and Hong Kong.

http://www.vodafone.jp/en/live/navi/index.html (English site)

http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G/v903t/index.html (English site)