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Dan's
Desk - from Triangle's CEO
Politics,
unfortunately....
These
are difficult times in Israel. From Japan the violence appears quite
frightening, and Israel again suddenly seems like a risky place
to do business compared to Japan and the US (doesn't influence anyone's
perceptions of Israel that I experienced a 4.4 Richter scale earthquake
from the 21st floor of my Tokyo office last week). Although 1600
Japanese sales reps from the beta-carotene company flew to Eilat,
most Japanese are regretfully canceling their trips to Israel. DoCoMo's
CEO cancelled his scheduled appearance at Telecom 2000, along with
75% and counting of the expected Japanese visitors. One of our Japanese
blue chip clients has prohibited any of its employees from visiting
Israel now. We at Triangle have decided to maintain our own "hasbara"
in Japan, in part by informing our Japanese friends about the situation,
and giving examples of Japanese companies who are continuing to
do deals, make investments, or visit. So please help out - if you
can mention any visitors, new business deals with Japanese companies,
or visitors, we will use it!.
Recent
deals..... Mitsubishi is moving into the lead! -TTL just closed
a $10 million investment in PrintLife.com (www.printlife.com)
with Mitsubishi and Jafco participating (led by Scitex; Triangle
helped get PrintLife off the ground a year ago, and we are active
on the board).
- Recently Mitsubishi invested in Appstream (not our deal unfortunately),
and PhoneOr (our deal).
- Mitsubishi last week set up a JV with Trivnet in the area of micropayments
(we were involved, and serve on the board of Trivnet
Japan)
- Toshiba's Internet iVC Company concluded a $2 million investment
in NuVisio (our deal)
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Table of Contents:
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Exchange
Rate as of November 7, 2000
$1 US = 107.45 Yen
1 NIS= 26.20Yen
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Finanacial
News
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TOSHIBA
INVESTS IN ISRAELI NUVISIO
Toshiba was lead investor in a $4 million investment round
in Nuvisio Corporation. The investment was made through Toshiba's
newly created iValue Creation Company ("iVC") which was established
to spearhead Toshiba's new Internet, e-commerce and mobile
Internet strategy. The investment was structured and negotiated
by Triangle Technologies which is exclusively advising Toshiba's
iVC on its Internet related investments in Israel. Nuvisio
provides a unique approach to Internet couponing that offers
both a secure delivery method as well as mass-distribution.
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General
Technology News
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TWO
MAJOR BROADBAND DEALS
First,
IIJ and Crosswave are launching a mainly cable-based broadband
network for distributing heavy content throughout Japan.
Various key content providers will participate, including
Konami and Koei for games.
Then secondly, Nifty has announced a new broadband content
service called Broadband@nifty. The service will provide
a broad range of music, movie videos, TV programs, storage
and game content. The company aims to sign up 1 million
broadband Internet users for the service by March 2003.
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COMPUTER
SHIPMENTS INCREASED
The Ministry
of International Trade and Industry says that Japan's computer
shipments rose 4.3% year-on-year to $7.75 billion for Q2 this
year. Mainframe shipments reached $1.35 billion, up 2.7%,
PCs reached $5.39 billion, up 9.8%, and servers declined 10.4%
$369.5m.
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NEW
COMPANY ENABLES PURCHASES AT CONVINIENCE STORES BY CELL PHONE
Lawson, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, and NTT DoCoMo plan to set up
a company that will offer customers access to convenience store
products over i-mode. Users will be able to place orders for
products that are available through an online Lawson catalog
at @LAWSON. They can then pick up orders from any Lawson store,
paying by cash or credit card.
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DEMAND
FOR E-COMMERCE SITE BUILDING TOOLS INCRESES
The Japanese market for tools to build electronic commerce
sites is expanding rapidly, and is expected to reach about
$145 million in FY 2000. The number came from a Nikkei Systems
Provider market survey of vendors.
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LINUX
DEMAND IS ON THE RISE
According
to IDC Japan a total of 531,300 server OS licenses will be
shipped in Japan this year, representing an increase of 26.9
percent over 1999. Shipments of the Linux operating system
are expected to jump 144.4 percent to 41,200 units. This 2.4-fold
burst in growth will propel Linux to a 7.8 percent share of
the overall server OS market in 2000, compared to a 4.0 percent
share the previous year.
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SEMICONDUCTOR
MARKET TO GROW 26 PERCENT
Japan's semiconductor market
is expected to grow to about $50 billion in 2000, up 26 percent
from 1999. Mobile phones, low-priced PCs and consumer digital
equipment will lead the market growth, according to a forecast
made in the fall of 2000 by the Dataquest division of GartnerGroup
Japan KK.
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3
PERCENT OF JAPANESE YOUTHS HAVE PCS
According
to a survey by Japan Entertainment Network KK, which operates
a satellite cartoon channel, only 3% of youths surveyed in Japan
have their own PCs, placing the country 10th on the list. South
Korea was in first place at 33% and Singapore was in second
place at 20%. On the other hand, 20% of youths in Japan have
their own mobile telephones, placing the country second on the
list behind Hong Kong, where the share was 25%. |
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NEC
INTRODUCES FIRST I-MODE MODEL WITH COLOR LCD
NEC shipped its first i-mode mobile phone with a color
LCD display. The model comes in a fold-up style with a big
screen area.
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MATSUSHITA,
TOSHIBA , SONY, HITACHI ,OTHERS TO STANDARDIZE STB FOR SATELLITEMatsushita
Electric Industrial, Toshiba, Sony, Hitachi, and 10 other
companies will set up a planning company to jointly standardize
set-top boxes (STBs) for satellite broadcast digital TV services.
Their STB, named "eSTB," will incorporate a 30-40GB hard-disk
drive (HDD) and a high-speed modem.
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CABLE
INTERNET AND DSL USE INCREASES
According
to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the number
of subscribers to Internet service via CATV rose to 463,000
in September, 1.4X the number of users in June. There were
2,573 users of ADSL or DSL services, twice the number of users
in June. Users of mobile Internet phones like the i-mode numbered
19,679,000 at the end of September versus 12,723,000 as of
the end of June.
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NEW
TECHNOLOGIES |
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NEW
NTT TECHNOLOGY MOVES DATA 100X FASTER
Nippon
Telegraph and Telephone developed a broadband communications
technology that transmits 100 times more data than current
high-speed, high-capacity optical telecommunications. NTT
claims that the technology is capable of simultaneously distributing
high-resolution video to 1 million homes. An NTT research
group successfully sent information at 1.28 terabits of data
per second at a distance of 70km using a 1.55-micron wavelength
laser beam, which is commonly used in conventional optical
communications, with minimal loss of data. The laser emitted
extremely short pulses of light with widths of 380 femto-seconds
at very small intervals.
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CABLE
INTERNET AND DSL USE INCREASES
According
to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the number
of subscribers to Internet service via CATV rose to 463,000
in September, 1.4X the number of users in June. There were
2,573 users of ADSL or DSL services, twice the number of users
in June. Users of mobile Internet phones like the i-mode numbered
19,679,000 at the end of September versus 12,723,000 as of
the end of June.
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