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KDDI and Excite Announce "Duogate"—New Company to Establish Portal Site Linking Mobile Phones and PCs
KDDI Corporation
Excite Japan Co.,Ltd.
2004/11/29
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KDDI Corporation and Excite Japan Co., Ltd. are pleased to announce "Duogate", a new joint venture company established to set up and operate a PC portal site designed for easy access by mobile phone. Centering on a cross-section of services including music and game content and communication tools, the portal will launch in the spring, and provide a new "Mobile phone while you're out, PC at home and office" user model.
The combination of KDDI's expertise in mobile internet services, and Excite's PC-oriented business, architecture and operations expertise for portal sites will allow the companies to expand their joint venture into a combined field of mobile and PC internet services—a task that has so-far been difficult to realize. There have been individual services that provide links between PCs and mobile phones, but there has been no portal service which has intended to achieve such integration thus far.
The new company is aiming not only to link individual services, but to integrate the entire portal for mobile phone and PC access. The portal site and Internet advertising business for mobile phones and PCs will be organically coupled, providing access suited to the various usage scenarios of both. It is the plan of the partners that the portal will be able to improve the Internet user experience for mobile phone users, while meeting client business needs at the same time.
With this new business, Excite will gain new foothold and increase its internet services for mobile phone users starting with providing portal service for the 17 million EZweb customers. At the same time the company will develop new advertising approaches, sell new portal site advertising frame-works, expand sales channels for Excite content including music, games and blogs, and provide infrastructure and a fee-charging platform for the portal site.
 | Duogate Overview |
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Name |
Duogate |
Location |
Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo |
Representative |
Takeshi Oasa |
URL |
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Employees |
Seven (full time) |
Capital |
490 million yen |
Investors |
KDDI (61.5%), Excite (33.5%), mediba (5%) |
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| Business Description |
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| (1) |
Portal Service Business
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The service will improve convenience and enjoyment of general PC-oriented Internet services by integrating mobile services with them. For example, a mapping service which coordinates with the EZ NaviWalk service using GPS, and storage features integrated with the EZ Memory-Pocket, mobile version of net-based storage are being considered.
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Also being considered are search services for popular genres of mobile content, including music, electronic books, and games as well as services to introduce recommended content. Another service being considered will allow PC users to go from searching-for through to purchasing of their favorite content through the au settlement service.
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A cross-section of services which can be used from mobile phones and PCs are being considered. For example, services which allow use of electronic books or games used on the mobile while away from home can continue to be enjoyed from home on the PC. All new services being offered will cover the needs of both mobile use and PC use, for a truly ubiquitous service.
The service will initially be designed to provide an optimized service oriented toward the 17 million EZweb users.
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| (2) |
Internet Advertising Business.
New advertising products for mobile phone and PC.
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| (3) |
By developing a new platform, increase the added-value of the portal service, and provide additional services for the content providers.
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