Jan Michael Hess wrote:
>
> 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.
Vodafone will not necessarily benefit of FeliCa in Japan,
since DoCoMo is firmly in control, and although I do
not know the details of the contracts, the way I understand
it, Vodafone is DoCoMo's customer regarding FeliCa/walletphones.
Although I do not know the contracts - I guess they are top-secret-
my guess is that Vodafone pays licensing fees and commissions to
DoCoMo - I am not sure Vodafone is that happy with FeliCa -
they were the very last one's to announce that they switched
to Felica - about a year ago they showed a competing non-FeliCa
technology at a trade show in Japan, introducing this as
their own proprietary FeliCa alternative: the handset was
called: J-SH5 4X and you can find this in our report about
the wireless Japan 2004 exhibition:
http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/wj2004/
I have never seen Vodafone's J-SH5 4X handset in the stores for
sale, and it would probably have been impossible for Vodafone
to ask retail partners in Japan to install different terminals
for Vodafone's J-SH5 4X wallet-phone technology in competition
to DoCoMo. So I guess, when Tsuda-san became CEO of Vodafone
Japan, he stopped the competing J-SH5 4X development and decided
for Vodafone to license the DoCoMo/SONY/FeliCa technology and
business models.
Mifare - by the way initially was developed by an independent
company in Austria, and was later acquired by PHILIPS -
so Myfare is initially Austrian technology, later acquired
by PHILIPS.
Gerhard
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Gerhard Fasol, PhD Eurotechnology Japan K. K.
http://fasol.com/ http://www.eurotechnology.com/
Mobile FeliCa report: http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/walletphone/
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Received on Wed Sep 21 13:14:57 2005