Microsoft chats up DoCoMo — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Messenger arriving soon} Microsoft chats up DoCoMo

4 Jun 2006 at 08:33 GMT Timo Poropudas

Microsoft is eyeing Japanese mobile markets by teaming up with the county’s largest operator NTT DoCoMo. It will release a version of its Windows Live Messenger application for use on NTT DoCoMo mobile phones “very soon,” according to Dow Jones Newswires. The news agency refers to unnamed sources at Microsoft.

Windows Live Messenger is Microsoft’s online chat program, which competes with a similar offering from Yahoo Japan. The Japanese mobile version will allow real-time chat with other users on PCs or phones, access to buddy lists, and a “wake-up” feature that will send e-mail to a user’s phone when friends want to chat.

Microsoft will initially offer the Messenger chat application as a Java program available for download on mobile phones but hopes to eventually make it a standard feature on all DoCoMo handsets, a source said.

A DoCoMo spokesman said he had no knowledge of the application, Dow Jones reports.

Microsoft will also offer a version of the program for other domestic carriers later this year, the source said.

Chat applications have become possible on mobile phones recently, as competition among Japan’s carriers has led to monthly plans that charge fixed amounts for unlimited data transmission. Programs like Messenger, which send large amounts of data to and from phones, would otherwise be too expensive for everyday users.

The new deal follows a May 11 announcement by DoCoMo and Microsoft on a tie-up to provide mobile music services on 3G handsets, and in January local media reported that DoCoMo would this year launch an advanced phone, which ran a version of the Windows operating system.