The Agency for Cultural Affairs has developed an outline of the plan for levying a kind of copyright fee on portable music players like iPod and recorders with a built-in hard disk that are designed to record TV programs.
The copyright fee refers to the compensation money for private recording of copyrighted sound and image.
It has already been imposed on the recording devices such as MD and DVD recorders.
The device price you pay includes the fee, making up a few percents of the price.
And the device manufacture pays it to owners of copyright.
Wed May 07, 2008
iPod to involve copyright fee? (1)
Mon May 05, 2008
HP Japan to resume sale of consumer PC
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Japan, Ltd. said on April 30 that it will begin to sell its consumer-oriented PCs at some of the BicCamera, Sofmap, and Yodobashi Camera sales outlets as soon as on May 3.
The company stopped selling them at retailers when it consolidated with Compaq in 2002.
However, it has decided to resume it in response to the success of the online sales.
Wed April 09, 2008
Japan-based ICT companies also follow suit on portal site
NTT Resonant Inc. and livedoor Co.,Ltd. have renovated the front page of their portal sites, goo and livedoor respectively.
The pages also look similar to that of Yahoo! Japan at the first glance; Microsoft Corp. will launch the analogously renewed one on its portal site MSN Japan on April 14.
These pages all have a three-column structure and highlight the ads.
However, livedoor tries to differentiate itself from the others by posting more information on the livedoor Blog service for which some 2.5 million people register―one of the biggest blog services in Japan.
Anyway, are the similar-looking pages inherent in the Japanese nature?
Sun April 06, 2008
Microsoft to follow suit on portal site
Microsoft Corp. will renew the front page of its portal site MSN Japan on April 14, company officials said at the press conference on March 31.
The page is expected to look similar to that of Yahoo! Japan at the first glance: the screen will have a three-column structure and make the ads more impressive.
Sun March 16, 2008
SHARP to boost presence in China
Sharp Corp. is planning to enhance its presence in China by launching its anchor product AQUOS keitai there as early as in June this year.
AQUOS is the brand of its flat-panel LCD TV, which is briskly selling in China.
The company aims to leverage the brand advantage, as well as the economic development being fostered by the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, in order to enter the fiercely competitive market of cellphone handsets.
However, it faces the severe challenge of grabbing market share from the world leading manufacturers such as Nokia and Samsung.
Thu March 13, 2008
Microsoft to enhance Net business
Microsoft Corp. announced Monday that it will expand its Internet-related businesses in Japan.
It plans to refurbish the front page of its portal site MSN in April, placing the popular items on the top including email features and stock quotation as well as increasing the ad space.
As more popular is getting video posting/sharing, its video delivery Web site MSN Video will be ready for that.
The company faces challenges of catching up with the two Net business giants―Google and Yahoo.
Mon January 21, 2008
SANYO to sell off its keitai businesses to KYOCERA
SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. has agreed with KYOCERA Corp. on the sell-off of SANYO's cellphone-related businesses to KYOCERA at ¥50 billion.
SANYO is the only manufacturer in Japan that has a distribution channel to a leading telecoms operator, Sprint Nextel in North America.
KYOCERA will take advantage of the distribution channel in order to expand its market presence abroad.
