(keitai-l) Re: European Felica

The UK's Transport for London organisation which manages a contactless
payment card for travel tickets currently has a tender out for companies
to help it expand the "Oyster Card" away from being just a travel ticket
into a general payment card.

I would not be surprised to see the "Oyster Card" being built into
mobile phones for the UK market in a few years time as a result of this.

It would be better though if the terminals installed in shops etc were
compatible with both FeliCa and Oyster, but I am willing to bet that TfL
will not approve of encouraging a competitor into the market.




-----Original Message-----
From: keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net
[mailto:keitai-l-bounce@appelsiini.net] On Behalf Of Jan Michael Hess
Sent: 21 September 2005 08:25
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Re: European Felica

I am one of the biggest fans of DoCoMo's FeliCa
service in Japan (soon to be offered by KDDI and Vodafone).

I do hope that it will come to Europe as it makes
payment and many other applications very fast and convenient which
are the key success factors.

But it needs a big marketing muscle and big investments to
penetrate the reader/writer terminals into POS and to convince
(by large volume orders) handset makers to build it in.

i-mode alliance partners outside Japan in most cases do not have
the number one market position (exception Telefonica Moviles).
Keep also in mind that DoCoMo can only give recommendations to
its i-mode alliance partners as they don't have majority stakes
as in the case of Vodafone.

Thus I expect Vodafone to be the one to push FeliCa or its
competing technology from Philips (www.mifare.net) in Europe
once they have learned the benefit in Japan.

And what helps FeliCa on mobile phones in Japan is the user
experience of standalone smartcards that you have to recharge
offline with a machine and real cash (as in the case of 20
million Suica users in of JR East).

Reagrds, Jan.

Keith McMahon wrote:
> With the demise of Simpay and the expansion of DoCoMo i-mode
licensees, do 
> people think DoCoMo will start pushing Felica into Europe?
>  Will the European Operators (esp Vod, Orange + T-Mobile) have to
develop 
> their own technology to compete?
>  Canthe European Operators license the Sony technology?
> Thanks,
> Keith

-- 
Jan Michael Hess
CEO, Mobile Economy
Mobile: +4917621208417

Mobile Executive Tour
Tokyo 3-7 Oct 2005
Seoul 10-14 Oct 2005
www.mobileeconomy.de/met

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