A speech
from Mr. Kinoshita, PHSMoU New Vice-Chairperson
Mr. Kinoshita, his first speech in General Meeting (April 13(Wed.)):
My name is Kinoshita of WILLCOM.
Thank you very much for this kind opportunity.
It is my pleasure here
to be elected as the Vice Chairperson of the MoU.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the members
and also to Chairperson Mr. Horisaki, Vice Chairperson Mr. Wakao,
Vice Chairperson Mr.Sam Endy, Secretariat Mr.Sugiura, and the Secretary
who have been supporting this meeting.
First of all, I would like
to explain briefly about WILLCOM and myself.
At present, I am the Representative Director and Chairman of WILLCOM
and used to be a member of KDDI, former DDI since its foundation
in 1984.
I have been in part of this PHS business since 1992 when its business
concept started. I have believed that PHS has some excellent features
than the other mobile systems and that it would be a major existence
in the mobile business.
DDI Pocket, the predecessor
of WILLCOM has started its PHS business on July, 1995. But in its
first part, we have made a wrong way in the marketing strategy and
had a very hard time when we tried to compete with the other mobile
companies because they had already been starting their services.
However, Mr. Chika here and the technical group have made progress
in the R&D as by;
A: Completing the micro-cell network nationwide
B: Opening up the mobile data communication field
And so we have recovered our management and for the present 3 years,
gaining a big profit.
Last October, we became independent of KDDI Group and on February 2nd, changed our name to WILLCOM. The reason we became on our own is as follows;
A: KDDI had 3 mobile means which are au's CDMA, TU-KA's PDC, and DDI Pocket's PHS. So if DDI Pocket were to become independent and extend its field, we could spread our business.
B: These 3 years, many companies have paid attention to DDI Pocket's possibilities and have offered to undertake our business.
These factors have suggested that for DDI Pocket's development, it is better to be independent from KDDI and the consortium of Carlyle Group and Kyocera has accepted DDI Pocket to develop its new businesses.
Together with the appearance of WILLCOM, the new executives have forwarded its branding and new services to promote PHS business.
On March 15th, we have announced the introduction of a flat-rate system in the voice communication market, starting next May.
At present, we have been gaining much response from the market, not only from the consumer but also from the corporate users. We have revised our target upwards to positively expand the voice services.
Lastly, since I have been assigned as Vice Chairperson today, I would like to positively contribute to the MoU activity by;
First, to make the most of WILLCOM's 10 years' experience for the development of PHS business.
Second, to promote the standardization of PHS in order to take advantage of the scale merit in the hard competition with the 3rd Generation and 4th Generation.
I consider it very important for the members here to cooperate in order to promote the standardization of PHS.
I am willing to make my effort to the MoU activity through promoting standardization and quality improvement in order to realize a more advanced PHS
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
