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NEW!!!!
Dan's Desk - from Triangle's CEO
Japan's
Entrepreneurs
There
is a myth that Japanese are not good entrepreneurs. I don't believe
it, and within the coming years we are going to see them coming
forth. The main inhibitors of entrepreneurship in Japan have been
a cultural fear of failure, a scarcity of risk-taking capital, and
an affinity for large companies, among others. Well, now there is
well over $1 billion (and rising) of private equity money in Japan.
The shattering of the belief of life-time employment has got the
highly capable salary men and women susceptible to headhunters.
The fear of failure still exists, but it will be overcome by some
tangible successes, which are not far off. Oki Matsumoto, whom I
have interviewed and met several times (including eating great sushi
at my favorite sushi bar!), just took his on-line trading company
Monex public, and it has been trading at a market cap of around
$1 billion give or take a few hundred million. Seiji Frank Sanda,
a long time sushi buddy, has created Japan Communications, which
is rumored to be heading to Nasdaq (US!) and is expected to be up
there. (We helped JCI raise $30 million in private equity to bring
it to its current stage). A third sushi friend (I eat a lot of sushi
in Japan!!), Koichi Suzuki, is a real internet pioneer, took Internet
Initiative Japan to Nasdaq last year - now worth about $2 billion
(down from 5 or so).
No
entrepreneurs? What about the founders of Sony, Honda, Yamaha, Seiko,
Omron, Panasonic and so on??
Within a few years I expect a significant venture industry in Japan
which will be the spearhead of Japan's economic growth.
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Table of Contents:
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Exchange
Rate as of October 10, 2000
$1 US = 108.87Yen
1 NIS= 26.86Yen
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Finanacial
News
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JAPAN'S FIRST INTERNET BASED BANK IS LAUNCHED
Sakura Bank recently established
Japan Net Bank Ltd. (JNB), Japan's first Internet-based bank
that it will establish together with seven other Japanese
companies.
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General
Technology News |
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INTERNET GAMES MARKET REACHED $40 MILLION
IN 1999
Tokyo
market researcher Seed Planning says that Japan's Internet
games market reached almost $0 million in 1999. The figure
includes both PC online games and also DoCoMo i-Mode cell
phone games. This number is expected to reach up to as $400
million in 2000.
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TOSHIBA
INTRODUCES 512 MB FLASH MEMORY
Toshiba
announced that it has developed a 512Mb flash memory chip
using a 0.16-micron process, in partnership with SanDisk.
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HOME
PC OWNERSHIP AND INTERNET USAGE INCREASE
According to Prudential US, Japanese households with annual
income of $27,000 reached a PC penetration of 46% as of August
2000, up 9% from last year. Of those homes with PCs, 75% have
Internet access. The survey also says that 81% of Japanese Internet
users have used email, 42% have searched online for product
information prior to making a purchase, and 16% have actually
shopped online in the last month.
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IT
SERVICE MARKET TO REACH $70 BILLION IN 2000
According
to a Dataquest, Japan's IT services market will increase 9%
to $71 billion in 2000 and by another 11.4% next year. Dataquest
says the main areas of spending will be for CRM, SCM, electronic
procurement, and LANs and security.
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7
MILLION WIRELESS INTERNET USERS IN JAPAN
According
to a survey by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications
(MPT) claims that there are currently 17.29m wireless Internet
users in Japan The MPT also said that the number of cable
companies offering Internet access rose from 133 to 140.
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KDDI
IS ESTABLISHED
KDDI
is a new company founded on Oct. 1, 2000, by combining DDI
Corp., KDD Corp. and IDO Corp. with mobile phone and PHS carriers
as subsidiary firms. This new company will be going up against
NTT DoCoMo. The new company, with estimated group revenue
of more than 3 trillion yen, provides domestic and international
long-distance service, as well as cellular phone services.
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DOCOMO
TO FORM UK OFFICE
NTT DoCoMo
will set up a subsidiary in London, England, in early November
to promote the W-CDMA technological standard for next-generation
cellular phones, as well as its cell phone-based i-mode Internet
access service, in Europe. DoCoMo Europe (UK) Ltd. will be the
firm's fourth overseas unit, coming in addition to those in
the U.S., Brazil and France. |
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PC
SOFTWARE SHIPMENTS UP 12 PERCENT
According to the Japan Personal Computer Software Association
(JPSA), shipments of packaged software for PCs rose almost
12 percent about $6 billion from the previous fiscal year.
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M-COMMERCE
MARKET TO REACH $7.6 BILLION IN 2003
According to a Jupiter study, it would take the European
and U.S. makers two years to reach the US$400 million mobile
commerce revenues currently generated in Japan. In 2003 mobile
commerce-generated revenues are expected to reach US$3.5 billion
in Japan.
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NEW
TECHNOLOGIES |
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SONY INTRODUCES DIGITAL CAMERA THAT GENERATES ANIMATION
Sony DEVELOPED
a compact digital camera with a GIF-format animation generation
system. The camera also will be able to send animations to
an i-mode mobile phone. The camera can take both still and
moving pictures, and it can generate animation by advancing
the frames on the camera.
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LIFE
SCIENCES |
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DRUG MANUFACTURERS CREATE JAPANESE GENE DATABASE
A consortium
of 43 Japanese pharmaceutical companies has been established
in order to build a gene database specific to Japanese people.
The project plans on to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms
(SNPs) that represent small genetic differences between individuals.
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