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October
2005
JCB, KDDI, Others To Promote
Credit Purchases Via Cell Phones
JCB Co., KDDI Corp. and eight other companies have agreed to establish a
council to promote a standardized system for handling credit purchases
using cellular phones. The council will discuss standards based on a
technology JCB developed for conducting credit card transactions using
noncontact-type smart cards. JCB's specifications will be made public to
council members, and discussions will be held on the development of
readers as well as linking the service with other methods of credit
purchases. The credit card companies and wireless phone firms that make up
the council realize that jointly developing a next-generation transaction
system will be less costly than going it alone. In addition, a common
platform will avoid the confusion retailers and consumers would face if
there were many incompatible systems. Although the council will begin with
a core membership of 10 companies, the goal is to gain around 50 members
before it holds its first general meeting. NTT DoCoMo Inc. is being asked
to join.
(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, October 8, 2005)
September
2005
E-Commerce Firms Post Higher
Sales, Mixed Results For 1st Quarter
Major e-commerce companies saw across-the-board sales growth in the
April-June quarter, but many reported lower profits, or even losses, due
to increased spending. Rakuten Inc.'s consolidated sales climbed 88% on
the year to 20.31 billion yen. Tenants in its virtual shopping mall were
up 41% to 12,409 as of June 30, and purchasers in this mall rose a solid
54% to 3.15 million people during the quarter. With its Web portal and its
online travel agency and financial services also enjoying a good quarter,
group pretax profit shot up 80% to 6.84 billion yen. DeNA Co.'s
consolidated sales jumped 151% to 1.21 billion yen, with
cellular-phone-related sales surging 13-fold and e-commerce-related
consulting performing well. Pretax profit was up 262% at 207 million yen.
Kenko.com Inc.'s health food Web site drew in 47% more visitors, thanks to
the expansion of the product lineup. As a result, parent-only sales gained
61% to reach 1.12 billion yen. The firm posted a parent-only pretax profit
of 31 million yen, compared with the year-earlier 21 million yen pretax
loss. Kakaku.com Inc. suffered from a price comparison Web site security
breach in May. The ensuing investment to bolster data security and prevent
further unauthorized accesses lowered group pretax profit by 73% to 49
million yen. Sales increased less than 1% to 432 million yen. Meanwhile,
E-net Japan Corp.'s nonconsolidated sales inched up 3% to 2.13 billion
yen. Its inefficient billing system and the intensified price competition
in mainstay audiovisual products pushed the company into a 29 million yen
parent-only pretax loss from the nongroup pretax profit of 33 million yen
of a year earlier. Golf Digest Online Inc. boosted nonconsolidated sales
by 32% to 1.66 billion yen. But new hirings to expand operations led to a
nongroup pretax loss of 26 million yen, a sharp deterioration from the
year-earlier parent-only profit of 121 million yen. Netprice Ltd.'s group
sales increased 55% to 2.94 billion yen. But increased payroll and active
advertising depressed the online cell phone sales firm's group pretax
profit by 39% to 67 million yen. (The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, September 8,
2005)
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