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NEW!!!!
Dan's Desk - from Triangle's CEO
"It
is a shame that so many talented development people in Israel are
developing the wrong product so well." - VP in a leading Japanese
mobile internet company.
15 million Internet phones today, and that was yesterday. Yes, Japan
is a determining market again. In the 1980's Davidi Gilo understood
that Japan was the determining market for consumer electronics (still
is for cars). If you were not in Japan, you were not anywhere. After
a decade of being totally overshadowed by the Intel-Miscrosoft-Oracle-Sun-AOL-EMC-Lucent
hegemony, Japan has totally outrun the US in mobile Internet. You
really have to see it to believe it - with thumbs flying, Japanese
are communicating and surfing, and making purchases on their 15
million internet phones, which are always connected. Sometime early
next year, 3G phones will provide 384 kbps service, enough for good
quality video on the small screens. In 2002, when virtually 100%
of the cell phones sold in Japan will be internet phones, the service
will exceed 1 mbps. Thousands of internet phone sites are already
in existence (I heard 15000 a month ago, but also heard they are
growing at 200, woops 300, a day, and accelerating).
At
the same time, at Triangle have seen over 50 Israeli companies,
and I suspect the number in existence is closer to 150 or more,
that are developing mobile internet products, technologies, applications,
and services. M-commerce is one of the new new things. Yet not one
of them (that we have seen) has any presence in Japan, has been
in dialog with any of the leading mobile internet operators, has
defined its product based on the needs or requirements or limitations
of the Japanese market. All of them are searching for "top tier
US VC's", an office in Boston or Santa Clara or London, a CEO from
Jerusalem or Jersey (but not Japan), all of which are going to help
them "develop the wrong product so well."
I will write more on this and other topics in upcoming newsletters.COMMENTS
or QUESTIONS? We would love to get a dialog going. Write to a_lewkowicz@triangletech.com
and we will publish your comments, with or without yourname, reserving
the right to edit your coments.
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Table of Contents:
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Exchange
Rate as of September 20, 2000
$1 US = 107.018 Yen
1 NIS= 26.39 Yen
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Finanacial
News
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NTT COMMUNICATIONS TO ACQUIRE VERIO
NTT Communications will acquire
US ISP Verio for $5.5 billion following the OK it received
from the US government to do so.
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J.P. MORGAN FORMS JAPAN UNIT TO INVEST IN START UPS
J.P. Morgan & Co. has set up a Japanese
unit of its Lab Morgan division to invest in and incubate
early-stage start-ups developing online financial transaction
services.
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General
Technology News |
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CONTENT ID FORUM INTRODUCES COPYRIGHT PROTECTION
TECHNOLOGY
Content
ID Forum, a group made up of 75 firms, introduced its copyright
protection technology intended to protect digital content.
The Forum hopes to have its technology established as a world
standard.
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JAPAN
SECOND IN ONLINE TRANSACTIONS
According
to research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres Japan, Japanese are
second to the US in buying products online. 20% of Internet
users in Japan have bought something online in the past month
compared to 27% in the US. The most popular items bought by
Japanese Web shoppers were cosmetics and daily necessities.
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128
KBPS PHS CELL PHONES
DDI Pocket will offer 128Kbps PHS cell phones. The company will
start offering phones with a packet-based interface, so as to
reduce the user chargesduring periods of network congestion.
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WEB
AD MARKET TO EXCEED $900 MILLION
Cyber
Communications, a Dentsu-SoftBank joint venture claims that
the Japanese Web advertising market will reach $460 million
in 2000, $920 million in 2002.
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ITOCHU
INITIATES INTERNAL INCUBATION PROGRAM
Itochu
has announced that it will establish 20 Internet subsidiaries
over the remainder of this fiscal year. Itochu said it will
invest up to $27.52 million to set up the companies, which
will be based on ideas solicited in-house.
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COMSORTIUM
PROMOTES FUNDS TRANSFER PROTOCOL
Six credit card companies in Japan established
a consortium to promote an electronic funds transfer standard,
PKICC, for mobile phones and video game consoles. PKICC is
a secure online payment method for use with mobile phones
and home video game consoles.
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IIJ
LAUNCHES JAPAN'S FIRST IPV6 NATIVE SERVER
Internet
Initiative Japan launched its IPv6 Native Service using dedicated
access lines. IPv6 technology overcomes IPv4(the protocol currently
in use) problems such as limited IP address availability, promising
to expand the possibilities of the Internet still further. IIJ
became the first commercial ISP in Japan to offer IPv6 service. |
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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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NEW
TECHNOLOGIES |
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SIMULTANEOUS INTERNET, TV VIEWING
Super Society
Consortium (SSC), an organization comprising six companies
including Japan Computer and Tokyo Cable Network has commercialized
technology that allows a single TV to simultaneously display
the Internet and television broadcasts. The set-top box can
display analog and digital broadcast content and also run
basic Internet functions such as e-mail and browsers.
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LIFE
SCIENCES |
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GOVT, ACADEMIA PLAN JOINT DNA CHIP RESEARCH
The Ministry
of International Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Health
and Welfare will coordinate efforts among government, industry
and academics to develop inexpensive DNA chips. Such chips
would examine genes to diagnose illnesses such as cancer and
diabetes.
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