Japan’s DoCoMo Launches Smart Chip Phone

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest mobile phone operator, launched a trial of a phone equipped with a Sony FeliCa smart chip, which can store electronic money and personal information

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced Monday that it will launch a trial of the “i-mode® FeliCa preview service,” using mobile phones equipped with FeliCa contactless IC chip technology developed by SonyCorporation.

The phones will be used for public transport tolls, electronic money, personal identification and other trial services between December 17, 2003 and the summer of 2004.

DoCoMo will supply 27 participating service providers with FeliCa-equipped mova® N504iC and SO504iC mobile phones (2,500 each) and each company will distribute the phones to its customers. Together with each company, DoCoMo encourage the customers to use the company’s trial services. The companies will represent business fields such as banking, convenience stores, television broadcasting, game software and retail ticketing. Users, services and service launch dates will vary depending on each company.

During the trial, DoCoMo will monitor and analyze service usage trends, interfaces between FeliCa services and Java-based i-appli® applications required to use the services, and related operations management. As part of considering possible new applications and services, the FeliCa platform and My Box