WW-166 -- Push Mail Services - Finally picking up in Japan?

Fri Sep 7 09:11:48 JST 2007

J at pan Inc presents the Wireless Watch Newsletter:

W I R E L E S S W A T C H

Commentary on the Business of Wireless in Japan

Issue No. 166
Friday, September 7, 2007
Tokyo

*****OUT NOW J at PAN INC MAGAZINE'S SUMMER ISSUE*****
Featuring our Real Estate Special, Web 2.0 Marketing and more!

Push Mail Services – Finally picking up in Japan?

The mobile corporate market is still underdeveloped in comparison
with overseas. Most employees still use their own private phone
and get their business calls reimbursed – a time consuming
exercise at the end of every month. Besides voice calls, business
users have a high demand to access their corporate mails and
agenda. The easiest way to get access to corporate mail is to
forward all incoming e-mails to your mobile phone or use a
POP-mail service that can be access through the mobile phone
browser. These methods are not secure and the mobile and
corporate mails are not synchronized.

DoCoMo introduced the BlackBerry in 2006 aimed at multinational
companies that already use the service in their overseas offices.
The BlackBerry is only available for the enterprise market. At
this moment there is only one device, the 8707h with a Japanese
user interface. DoCoMo provides the BlackBerry enterprise server
that integrates with corporate mail servers like Microsoft
Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino for secure access to e-mail.
DoCoMo sees the BlackBerry as a cash cow creaming only the top
of the market – flat data rates do not apply and hefty roaming
data fees are charged to the bankers visiting Tokyo. We often see
non-Japanese professionals using the BlackBerry in the Kamiyacho,
Akasaka, and Otemachi districts where many financial foreign
institutions are located.

Another player in the push-mail market is Visto who works with
SoftBank. The company does not sell its own phone like Research
In Motion does with the BlackBerry – it provides a client to
install on the end-user's phone of choice, and a server that
connects to the customer's mail server securely behind the
corporation's firewall. Visto launched the first real-time push
service supporting Japanese language in 2005 under the Vodafone
Office Mail brand, and the service was re-branded SoftBank
Wireless Assistant in 2006. In August, Visto announced a new
service in a tie-up with PTS Consulting. 'Mobile carriers often
lack the IT expertise to setup the push mail services and PTS
Consulting, our service partner, has this expertise. We will
first target the foreign enterprise market where there is still a
lot of low hanging fruit, and then move more and more into
Japanese enterprises as awareness of these types of services
expand in the market', according to Darren McKellin. The Visto
service with PTS is available on the Nokia E61 and N73 devices
from Vodafone, and the recently launched Windows Mobile 5 phones
from HTC that run on the DoCoMo and Softbank networks. 'Flat data
rate plans are available for all devices we support, and,
contrary to the BlackBerry service architecture, no customer data
or credentials are stored on servers outside the enterprise's
firewalls', says McKellin.

The push mail market in Japan is clearly underdeveloped. Until
now the lack of devices and lack of expertise to setup the
services were the bottlenecks. The new Visto service with PTS
tackles both issues. 'Japan is a huge, untapped market for
real-time push-mail services, I expect a few million corporate
push mail users within 2 years in Japan', says Visto's McKellin
optimistically. Stay tuned and wait for our push mails to arrive.

By Arjen Van Blokland

To comment on this newsletter please visit the website version of
the article at www.japaninc.com/ww166

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Entrepreneur's Handbook Seminar 6th of October, 2007

If you have been considering setting up your own company,
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RidgeRunner Niseko
International Cricket Competition 15-17 September 2007

This is your invitation to three days of fun at an
international cricket tournament in Niseko being held to
the benefit of the Tyler Foundation for Childhood Cancer.

Cricketing legend Dennis Lillee will be attending the event
which is being co-hosted by the Higashiyama Prince Hotel and
includes two days of cricket, a golf match and charity
dinner dance and auction.
For more information, and the chance to win a
dinner with Dennis,

please visit www.ridgerunner.jp/cricket
or contact Simon Jackson
( simon at rad-development.com, 011-876-3704)

------------------- ICA Event-Sept 20 -------------------

SPECIAL JOINT EVENT with the AUSTRALIAN NEW ZEALAND CHAMBER

Speaker: Tim Williams, Founder and Director of Value Commerce
Topic: Japan Success Stories - Value Commerce

Details: Complete event details at http://www.icajapan.jp/
(RSVP Required)
Date: Thursday, September 20, 2007
Time: 6:30 Doors open
(Light buffet, beer, wine, soft drinks included)
Cost: 3,500 yen (members), 5,500 yen (non-members)

Open to all-location is Australian Embassy B2
http://www.australia.or.jp/english/seifu/embassy/map.html

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