Japanese web king aims for the stars

Also in the vnunet.com Asia news wrap for 7 March 2006: Chinese mobile TV may approach 100m in 2009; China server sales up 20 per cent

A Japanese entrepreneur who made a fortune from an internet company later hit by fraud allegations will visit the International Space Station in September, it was announced today.

Daisuke Enomoto, who likes to be known as 'Dice-K', hopes to make the trip in a suit modeled on a character from the popular Japanese anime series, Gundam.

US company Space Adventures organised Enomoto's trip in cooperation with the Russian Federal Space Agency which will take Enomoto aloft in a Soyuz spacecraft.

Space Adventures did not disclose the fee agreed for the trip, but the three previous private visitors to the International Space Station were reported as paying sums approaching $20m.

The company said that 34 year-old Enomoto would go to Russia to commence training but did not say whether his Gundam suit had been approved by Russian space authorities.

According to his website, Enomoto is cooperating with various Japanese companies, including Seiko, which will design a special watch for his trip, and toy maker Bandai, which is assisting with the Gundam suit design.

Venture capitalist Enomoto made much of his fortune from Livedoor, a Japanese internet investment company which became embroiled in an accounting scandal this year, resulting in fraud charges against its founder and the suicide of a brokerage executive. Enomoto, Livedoor's former chief strategic officer, left the company in 2003.

In the long-running Gundam animated series, characters do battle in gigantic robot suits. Enomoto reportedly plans to base his suit on the anti-hero Char Aznable, described by some sources as akin to Darth Vader from the Star Wars series.

A picture on his website appears to show a potential suit design.

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The number of mobile TV subscribers in China could begin to take off next year and reach 94 million by 2009, according to US research firm, In-Stat.

However, although operators are ready to offer TV broadcasts to mobile phones and other portable devices, vague government regulations might be a stumbling block, the company said today.

"Unclear regulations need to be straightened out so that responsibilities and value chain positioning can be settled, otherwise market development will be inhibited," warned Anty Zheng, a China-based analyst with In-Stat.

The Chinese government wants mobile TV ready in time for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Zheng believes.

China is trying to promote a home-grown video encoding technology, the Advanced Audio Video Coding Standard, for internet TV and mobile TV applications.

However other such initiatives, such as recent government backing for the TD-SCDMA 3G telecoms standard, have been blamed for slowing the introduction of new technology into China's market.

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IBM and HP maintained their position as the leading companies in China's server market in the fourth quarter of 2005, Analysys International reported.

Total sales for the quarter were around $600m, an increase of 19.3 per cent year-on-year. The market was a small one in global terms, with only 137,000 units sold in the quarter.

Foreign companies dominated, recieving over 80 per cent revenue from server sales. Local firms Lenovo and Lang Chao Electronics took in about five per cent each, Analysys reported.

Brand recognition, a full range of products and good customer relations are critical factors in IBM and HP's success, commented analyst Li Zhixin.

"Both IBM and HP occupied a high market share in government, telecoms and finance industries," he added.