Secondly, the tour was enlarged due to the broader theme: in the program there were companies that are leaders in the sphere of IT solutions and electronics: Sony and Hitachi that are not telecommunication companies/operators, even though they have some serious projects in this sphere. In this case, the main task that organizers of the tour had for them was to show all spectrums of IT/Telecom companies in Japan and to form a direct dialog between business in Japan, Ukraine and Russia. The second task was to show how solutions/services on the basis of mobile telephone/terminals are realized in Japan and how Japanese companies interact during this realization of what is called “Mobile convergence, unique mobiles solutions”. If to explain this term in more simple words, when “mobile convergence” occurs– it is the tight integration of devices and services for the realization of some tasks. For example, telephones with functions of television and wallet etc. Each of the companies that we visited showed us in practice why each of them is counted as the leader in some particular segment and how that makes Japan a leader. In this particular report we will try to show it to you too!

When you hear about Japanese companies that have achieved success in the sphere of electronics, the first company that comes to your mind is – Sony. What is so unique about the company? The main unique feature is that Sony not only has developed new products and services but also stands in the forefront in the realm of fundamental technologies. For instance, 60% of all the companies’ operational income comes from electronics, 11.2% - from games (recall Playstation3), 10.6% - from media and images (for example « Da Vinci Code”, “Casino Royale” , “Spiderman” were all created by Sony), 7.2% - from financial services (investments into various perspective technologies) and 4.2% - from the rest. The Company manages to surprise the world in every segment it works in. Here are some of the most striking technologies that we saw while visiting Sony company.

First of all there is the new generation of Sony photo cameras. Their main difference is that the device automatically focuses and takes a picture when you smile. The model looks quite similar to other digital cameras but the functions that this Sony camera has - Face Detection, Smile Shutter bring many positive emotions when you work with it. So here you can see business with human face and a method to differentiate the company among competitors.

The participants of the tour were amazed by the other innovative device/toy that was created by Sony. Its name is Rolly. This new robot (even though its looks are so real) has become a new development after the company’s famous dog AIBO. The main specialty of Rolly is in its ability to dance very precisely after you have downloaded music to it. By the way, the toy does not have any hands or legs. It looks like oblong cylinder with two active elements - ears on both ends. When we saw this toy, we immediately understood why people in Japan are eager to pay hundreds of dollars to buy it. Of course these fun products were not the main goal of our visit. They just gave us a chance to understand the scale of technological appraisal in Japan, so if Japanese toys can be like that, how innovative can business products be!

One such business product, that was created to meet the needs of concrete companies (B2B sector), is the system of smart video control - IPella (IP + bella). This system consists of “smart cameras” and the processing of images for the needs of offices and secured objects. For example, on the screen, the movement of objects is fixated and there is a possibility to draw a line that will show, where the “prohibited area” starts. Any person that crosses the line of this zone, will “attract attention”, and also if needed security will be notified. The system can keep track of people, animals etc. Thus the system is perfect to be used in those places where human eye can’t catch all the details. Naturally the system is the best fit for use via Internet, allowing tracking of objects over a large distance. For instance, these products would be useful to solve problems associated with traffic jams in large cities both in Ukraine and Russia. (Or at least be useful for early notification of such problems). The second product from the same series of monitoring and control aroused even more enthusiasm and excitement. It is the system that is called Wide Area Monitoring Solutions. The system, that doesn’t have any analogues in it’s preciseness, consisting of two cameras with high definition. Ideally the system can be used to monitor large territories spanning angles up to 270 degrees. We were shown, how the camera that was placed on the top of a television tower has enlarged the chosen object from “general outlines from the bird’s eye view” to “ideally seen details of the car’s identification number”. Besides that, the cameras (there are two of them) can keep in focus and automatically single out zones where movement occurs. In addition, at the same time the movement from water, trees and similar objects are not taken into account. Indeed – dream of frontier troops :)

Besides all that, Sony amazes everyone with its business strategy. Practically every company that we visited during the tour is a shareholder and has taken part in the development of one or another of their innovative products. For instance, nowadays Sony often only appears as a development electronics company, but rather as investment company that chooses prospective technologies and brings those new technologies into the market. Thus you can see here the venture business “a la Japan”.

The Hitachi company motto - «Inspire the next». In this motto the company has put its need to strive and to create such products that will arouse admiration and be marketable. Being one of the biggest Japanese corporations they make developments in various fields, Hitachi constantly manages to develop new unique devices and solutions that are directed to solving practical problems and tasks. Some of those solutions were demonstrated to the participants of the management tour.

First of all it’s the technology of Finger Vein Authentication that allows one to identify a person with the help of the “venous image”. The core of this technology is that a special scanner scans not the finger prints but the picture of veins in a cut. Every person has their own pattern and picture of veins. Besides that, system understands when there is real and live finger and when there is not (sorry for details). When this technology is used with the smart-card system and with password security it is practically impossible to fool. There are several options of product realization. For example, it is possible to put such technology in a cash machine or in a cell in a bank to avoid jewelry theft and machinations. Besides that, similar devices that are connected to the Internet give wonderful opportunity to identify and check the person, who is doing the transaction or logging in with the remote device

The second technology that was shown to the participants of the tour was -“Electronic document processing”, which can be very useful in large and inefficient government organizations in Ukraine and Russia. The technology consists of complex solutions for such fields, such as conversion, processing and transformation of printed documents into electronic ones and vice versa. For instance, technology «Signature Plug-in Type-JS» allows automatic transformation of printed documents with the help of a special scanner while adding electronic certificates that confirm authenticity of the documents. After that, those documents (Standard acts, laws), can be stored in the database for many years. When there is a need to renew some of them and to sign once more, every single page (electronically), the system checks the authenticity, and makes dates into accordance. It will be really useful for both Russian and Ukrainian parliaments with their constant signatures needs and tones of documents.

Imagine that you left your home without any money, without keys from both your house and your office, and without your shopping discount cards… only with your mobile phone! You will say - «it’s impossible, you can’t live normally even the day without these things».The Impossible becomes possible. Approximately 33 million people (40% of mobile phone users that have Felica chip in it) manage to live without simple purse, keys and other attributes of “normal life”.

In Japan this technology is commonly used and is realized in various spheres. With the help of the Felica chip (that can be built into anything) Japanese people have the opportunity to pay for their airline tickets, do their shopping in more than 4000 trading networks and more than 63000 shops, bars and gaming machines. There are no more questions, like “Will this technology replace real money”. Now the question is “How much time should pass in order for the technology to replace them, and to what extent real money will still be used. “

What does the Felica company do? It creates, promotes and gives licenses to use this technology. Up to this moment, the company has manufactured approximately 200 million chips. There is the need to mention, that the company physically does not produce chips. Instead production is made on the outsourced to such companies as Sony, Toshiba, and Renesas. Phone producers integrate chips into telephones; mobile operators give network access and realize various services. Partner-providers (air companies, railway, companies that produce beverages and automates, financial organizations) – provide the possibility to pay for their services with the help of Felica chip.

Company Bitwallet, the partner of Felica, is in charge of the developing of various variants to do with realization of the technology in many spheres of business. For instance, in 2007 the company signed a contract with one of the biggest retail chains in Japan -7&Holdings, under which there is now a possibility to pay using special card Nanaco. Another example of realization of this technology is special cards called Visa Touch, which are present only in Japan. In this particular case, this is firmly integrated with a banking account card that allows paying for products in various chains with the help of Felica technologies. Another interesting example from a marketing point of view is the cooperation with drug store chain Matsumoto Kiyoshi. It works like this: you receive a coupon-advertisement from where it offers the latest replenishment of drugs and about the latest news and discounts. After that, the person can simply come to the store and pay for products using his/her mobile phone. Everyone wins – the buyer receives news on-the-fly and the chain of the retail store maximizes its turnover. The BitWallet solutions are very popular. For instance, even in all PlayStatation3 game consoles there is a possibility to buy various things that associates with favorite games using the BitWallet card (EDY).

The Japanese standard for mobile digital audio/video transmission of data is called "1seg."

The name originated from the fact, that one of the 13 segments in the signal band is devoted to broadcasting for mobile phones. After lengthy testing 1seg was officially launched on the 1st of April 2006. The screen for 1seg is divided into two sections: the upper half for television, and the bottom – to reflect data for this program. The bottom part is the most important. With its help it’s possible to log to the Internet.

Companies have big hopes concerning profit from new services that offer these technologies, (in particular to make instance purchases), that will replace the old format of purchasing with the help of the computer. For example, buyers will have the opportunity to order clothes of celebrities such as TV presenters or from actors while they are watching a television program. You like the song that is played during an advertisement or while watching a movie? Than you can immediately download it to your mobile phone as a ring tone or order the whole disk. You need the ingredients that the presenter of the culinary show uses while preparing the dish? No problem. Simply push the button, and the store will deliver to you everything you need with all needed information for the recipe. These are the realities of using mobile TV in Japan.

This technology is being realized and created by the NHK companies. The main specialties of the company – are preparation, issuing of content for mobile TV and selling it to other companies. The other company that has a direct relationship to mobile TV but which is working with another signal transmission standard is Mobile Broadcasting. Its peculiarity is based on the fact, that the transmitted signal is very strong and qualitative. This feature makes it possible to accept the signal without special devices, for instance TV plate/antenna.

If you subscribe to the following service (it costs around 2500 yen=20 dollars a month) and if you pay for the selected package (around 20 dollars) you can receive the signal practically everywhere: in the tunnel, airplane, car etc. For example, we were surprised to hear, that it is possible to receive qualitative signal in a plane that moves at over 900 km per hour. This technology uses special sensors that are called gap-filler and a special satellite that was launched several years ago. There is also a need to mention, that while walking through Tokyo, we saw several times people sitting in the metro and watching TV with the help of their mobile phones and special miniature devices. This proves that people have interest in this particular technology.

Until 2006, Japanese mobile operators offered their subscribers mobile search opportunities only on their official sites. That of course meant that subscribes needed to be on the site. It was of course convenient to operators, but not for subscribers. Later there were several changes made in this sphere. Japanese mobile operators started to integrate search components of world-wide known companies (Google, Yahoo!), thus allowing their subscribers to search for the information throughout the whole internet.

One of the meetings during the visit was devoted specially to mobile search technologies. For instance MCN company has developed solution that allows optimizing search with the help of a mobile phone. For example, in mobiles it’s not very convenient to look through thousands of pages that Google show you after each search inquiry. In order to make search results more convenient to purview, mobile operators can do the following: a search inquiry that was received from the mobile phone goes through a special made search solution created by MCN. After that, the user receives results on the basis of filters on the mobile phone and that are directly connected to the inquiry. .
This technology can serve as a supplement, so to speak, one that will improve the existing mobile search mechanisms. Plus the system works not only with the text but with images and melodies etc. One of the projects that was realized for the two companies DoCoMo and D2Communications (advertisement agency of DoCoMo) was shown to us, was the search technique for melodies and information about them, while to radio listening on a mobile. While you are listening to the song, push the special button that is built into the phone especially for such requests and the search browser gives you links that refer only to this song. Also it is very important; that this MCN product allows to track how quick and effective the inquiry that was made. Meaning you can see whether the mobile user has used the results of the inquiry or not and this data is very important in evaluating effectiveness of mobile communications.

There is no secret that Japanese people love certain type of comics, or how they are called in Japan – Anime. From the point of view of European people who have never seen the style, such global enthusiasm for Anime looks like entertainment for kids. But for a person that has been introduced to the Japanese culture and with developments and promotion of such type of industry entertainment, everything becomes clear and understandable. Moreover, you understand that this enthusiasm for such comics is not only for kids. This is a huge market, where several studios that are not inferior to famous Hollywood studios are working. This is a market where development companies earn huge sums of money.

Mobile market in Japan is not only the most innovative, but the most competitive. There are three mobile operators in the market that work in the w-cdma standards and that support 3G technology. These are: DoCoMo, Softbank and KDDI. If to look at how many subscribers each particular company has, then it looks like the following: DoCoMo - 52 million, including 41 million 3g users, Softbank – 17 million, including 11 million 3G users, and KDDI – 29 million, including 28 million 3G users. The competition in the market is simply fantastic. Each week, operators offer new services for their clients and form new alliances with various companies in order to make the mobile phone the device that has everything in it. Innovations and the level of development are simply amazing.

First of all it’s important to mention one of the fastest progressing mobile operators – SoftBank company. The company is unique because of the fact that it has managed to unite under one “roof” several similar directions that together make a unique synergetic effect. In general the company works not only in the field of mobile communications, but also in e-commerce, by possessing Yahoo! Japan; in the field of financial networks – Japan Telecom company; and in the field of fast Internet connections – BroadBand company. This is a really strong competitive advantage for the company, since with it; the company has a huge client database. Plus, the company is progressing every year. Here are several key achievements comparing with 2006: а) increasing the number of 3G users; b) improving the quality of network and coverage in Japan; с) offering new innovated mobile phones models; d) improving content, it’s uniqueness and new strategic partnerships in this field.

Among the products that amazed us the most were the special telephones for little kids, where there is an opportunity to dial without entering any number combinations such as the parent’s number. It’s done very simply, since on the telephone there is a special plastic loop, after pulling which the telephone automatically dials parent’s number. This is an example of narrow and correct target segmentation work. By the way, the nearest competitor of SoftBank – KDDI company also has a similar phone for kids.

In the field of media of entertainment content, Softbank has managed to overcome its competitors by signing an agreement with Disney company. Thus, company could offer its clients famous Disney comics such as “Aladdin”, “Beauty and the Beast” and the “Lion King” for mobile phone users. It is a major step forward, since previously, companies have offered only anime comics.

What did this particular meeting give us? First of all an opportunity to form tight relations with one of the most active companies in the market that is open to new ideas. Secondly, the opportunity to get to know more a unique business model and the strategy of uniting various media services under one brand (mobile communications, portals, broadband etc). Thirdly, we could see a successful example of unique partnerships between SoftBank and some of the biggest western companies. So our visit to one of the best mobile operators in Japan was indeed very productive and interesting.

Now a bit more detailed information about the newest telephones. The company has created a new mobile phone 905SH Aquos, that has all the latest developments/services and that is ideally optimized for the mobile TV. Plus from 14th of June, 2007 company offered a new mobile phone that is the slimmest on the Japanese market - 705SH Slimia. By the way, during the management tour, we had an opportunity to visit the company’s main shop where we saw all the latest developments of mobile phones and the companies’ most innovative products.

The other day, we managed to visit another company - NTT DoCoMo. Although the meeting was quite limited in time, participants of management tour had an opportunity to see several break-through technologies that the company offers. Now we will talk about the most interesting among them.

In April 2007, the company announced that several mobile phones from it’s series 904i will be equipped with special movement sensors, that will allow users to be more involved in games with the ability of inclination or shaking of the telephone (like joystick in really popular game - Nintendo Wii). To make it more vivid let us give one example. If you play for instance in rally racing game, then to turn your car you need to move telephone to the right or left. Possibilities of realization of this particular technology are endless. It’s interesting also to know, that this joystick can be used to roll the document on the screen or moving through the internet page. If to shake joystick while writing the email, you can open sensor menu or open the incoming mail while listening to music, or to switch from vertical to horizontal vision of a video (as it’s in iPhone).

When you come for the first time to D2C company and get to know more about its achievements and work and even if you are a good marketer, you start to understand that you know probably know nothing about marketing in the mobile sphere. It’s all because of the fact, that traditional marketing and marketing in the mobile sphere are two different things, like riding a horse, or driving a Formula 1 car.

Mobile operators understood that and thus created their own special advertisement agencies in order to develop its mobile marketing. SoftBank has JM Communications, KDDI – has Mediba company, and Docomo - D2C. Participants in the management tour had a possibility to meet with the management of D2C company and to evaluate possibilities for use of it’s technologies in the Ukrainian/Russian market. In this particular case, D2C has become an expert in the field. It’s necessary to comment on several interesting trends in the Japanese mobile market. First of all it’s the constant increase of mobile advertisement in comparison with traditional and internet advertisement markets. For instance the money spent on mobile advertisement has increased from 2005 by 135% which is a good indication. It is assumed that mobile advertisement spending will practically equal search advertisement and will make up over half of classic internet advertisement by 2011.

Why then does mobile advertisement have such good figures in Japan? First of all it’s because of how the Japanese people use mobile phones. If you look at people in the metro (a lot of people are use this kind of transportation to get from Tokyo suburbs to the city), then you can notice, that they practically don’t talk in public transportation. Moreover it’s forbidden in some cases, since there are several signs in some places in metro. Thus the time in metro is spent on playing games, searching the internet and various services etc. This is one of the reasons of mobile marketing success.

In order to make mobile phones more convenient for use to its users and effective to client- advertisers, D2C has developed several innovative services. For example, QR codes, service ToruCa etc. These services are full of opportunities and usefulness to advertisers. For instance, with the help of QR codes (a small quadrant with coded graphical information) advertiser can do not only direct transferring to other sections of the product but also can track how many users used the link to their products. For instance, a recording company using special disks, can code the link to the product on some track in order for the user to be able to hear it/performer before doing a purchase.

90% of all mobile phones in Japan have the function of reading QR codes and this is counting the fact that almost 85% of users have used this service once, 20% use it every week, and 44% use it every month. One more thing concerning QR coding: Japan is the market with one standard. Originally develop by Denso-Wawe to solve problems of logistics and transportation in production, these black and while dual codes can be decoded by the telephone, even if only 40% of the code was perceived. The system is stable towards errors and works even if the code was read at the wrong angle or is partially degraded. It’s free of charge to use and generate these codes. That’s why they are widely spread. Costs spent on licensing the production is being compensated by developers of mobile phones and transponders that are integrating this software into their devices.

Have you ever thought why you give preference to one or another mobile phone? Why we are choosing for example, Nokia, Samsung or Siemens? Very often besides technical qualities that are being built into telephones (that are rarely used); we evaluate the inner view of the mobile, meaning its menu, convenience to work with etc. In this sense it is possible to say that telephone is made up of the body (iron) and the soul (software). Using this metaphor, it is possible to say that the world-wide known Access company that we visited does a unique thing – it gives soul to the mobile.

If to be serious, the company is one of the leaders in the development of browsers and software for mobile phones and various computer devices. Under software we mean first of all the interface part that is being contacted directly by the user. The company is working on 5 continents and at the same time is flexible and creative in development of solutions. It offers solutions to users and operators, mobile phone producers and content providers. There is practically no operational system that company’s experts and company’s products have not worked or cooperated with. Among products there are solutions for Linux, Palm, Mobile smart phone, Symbian, Brew, Wave. The wideness and developmental work of these solutions is simply amazing.

I want to talk about one of the company’s interesting solutions in the field of mobile email. In order to “give life” to your mobile mail, the company has developed a special application that analyzes the text of your push-mail and depending on that, some media-object (in our case it was a puppy), with the help of mimics and movements that can produce some emotions (barking, smiling etc) depending on the content of the message. At the same time, this object appears exactly in mobile mail that is being received on the mobile phone. You may ask what the point of this solution is. First of all it is pleasant and what is pleasant is attractive. But the main thing is that such emails stimulate the more frequent use of “non-voice” services of a mobile phone and in particular email. This is of course, attractive to mobile operators.

What can be learned from the company? First of all, it’s unique organization of the R&D process and also how company forms up the product and technology lines. Besides that, a very important element of the company’s success is how it taps into the feelings and the pulse of innovative products and how it makes corrections and changes on-the-fly, depending on the technology that is becoming more and more popular. For example, the company was among one of the first ones that started to develop browsers for mobile phones and that started to make developments on the Linux platform. It is possible to say with confidence, that participants of the management tour and the company itself found a lot in common in the field of business.

One of the last companies that we visited was Emobile (eAccess). Their innovative product consists of using the cutting edge technology HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) and IP technologies. If to explain it in more simple language, that it is using IP technologies for transmission of voice (mobile communication) and receiving access to the Internet from any point. By doing a non complicated comparison, one of the companies’ directors explained why such a variant of accessing the Internet and voice services are much more profitable and much cheaper than competitor’s proposals. Immediately we were told that for now it’s pretty hard to compete and that the technology has the possibility to thrive if coverage will be spread all over Japan. Now, the company offers this service only in the biggest cities of Japan and in prefectures (Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka).

Why the company is interesting for us and was necessary see? First of all by seeing how a new technological idea for Japanese people is developing. It’s also interesting to see, how the company promotes the product – massively, very aggressively and by forming distribution channels mainly through partnerships with the biggest shops of technical and electronic equipment. Also what is really amazing is the fabulous content (video and images), that is definitely not inferior to other Japanese mobile operators.

Of course this is not everything that we saw, heard and familiarized ourselves with during the tour and with whom we had business meetings and not to mention the networking opportunities. This is simply an attempt to show how beneficial and profitable a partnership with Japanese companies can be. We wanted to show how it is useful “to look at other the side, and get out of the every day business routine shell”. Since it’s not a secret that in both Russia and Ukraine there are a many companies that are interested to form partnerships with Japanese colleagues. In our countries, 3G technology is developing at full speed. This technology will launch a very important mechanism of innovative change and transformation and this in its turn will change the need for reliable partnerships from in the near future to very urgent. Such management tours are first of all a great opportunity to form business contacts, talk about partnership and cooperation with Japanese colleagues. They are a great opportunity to see and get to know more about the technologies that might appear in future in our countries. It is a perfect opportunity to outdo competitors for a day, a month or a year.