Wallet Phones to debut in Japan this Saturday
On July 10, first RFID-enabled mobile phones (aka Wallet Phones) will be released in Japan. Panasonic”Ēs handset P506iC (the prefix P indicates Panasonic and the postfix C indicates embedded RFID chips) will be the first one. Fujitsu, Sharp, and Sony will follow(F900iC, SH506iC and SO506iC, respectively).
10 companies (AP/PM Japan, Sammy, J-WAVE, Sega, All Nippon Airlines, Sony Finance International, Toho, Bic Camera, BitWallet and Fuji Xerox) will start services for wallet phones this Saturday. Daiichi Kosho will launch their service later this month. As of now, 39 companies indicated their intention to launch services for wallet phones.
Mitsubishi Research Institute's recent consumer survey revealed that more than half of the consumers want to use wallet phones as a multi-store customer loyalty/reward card. Female consumers are more cautious about using wallet phones for payment than male consumers. (Consumer electronics retailer Bic Camera will start a service that allow consumers to use wallet phones as customer loyalty/reward card. )
Those who want to be the first ones to own a brand new P506iC handset can go to Nojima Roppoingi, a retail store in Tokyo, Friday night. The store will start selling P506iC handsets at midnight after a small event to celebrate this new technology.
Sources (in Japanese): ITMediaNews1, ITMediaNews2, ITMediaNews3, Nikkei, MRI Press Release
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NE Asia Online