Docomo Aims to Improve Mobile Content With dmenu and dmarket

Docomo CEO, Ryuji Yamada, announced dmenu and dmarket

Earlier this evening we told you about Docomo’s (NYSE:DCM) brand new smartphone lineup. But the company also rolled out a content strategy of sorts, unveiling its new ‘dmenu’ and ‘dmarket’ services. These will become available in November and will aim to improve existing mobile content offerings.

According to Docomo, dmenu is a portal site for content from a range of providers, including its own i-mode content. As for dmarket, users can expect to find movies, music, e-books, and Android apps available there. As for dmarket, users can expect to find over 5,000 video titles (20,000 episodes in total), over a million songs (selling for 105 yen to 525 yen per song), and over 30,000 book titles from Japan’s leading publishers. There is also an ‘Appli’ or application section where users can download the latest apps.

The company had a couple of its content providers in attendance at today’s event. A Bandai Namco reporesentative took the stage to explain his company’s content contribution – to be honest – didn’t sound like too much. There was something about a ball-rolling game and a Pac-Man game (see right), neither of which struck me as overly attractive smartphone content. There was also a Simple 100 Series, which looks like a collection of casual games for when you want something less even less casual than Pac-Man.

There was also a representative from Imagineer who – among other things – explained that emoji can now move around in your text. That is kinda cool, but I was surprised that it received stage time as a part of Docomo’s content strategy. I initially expected some streaming media partnerships, or perhaps some games that look a little more modern.

During the Q&A session, CEO Ryuji Yamada got the inevitable iPhone question (the iPhone 4S just launched in Japan on competing networks Softbank and KDDI), asking how Docomo’s Android dominated lineup stacks as competition. He seemed to cling to the safety net of hardware specs (a haven for any Apple competitor), but overall he sounded pretty confident with their offering:

Compared to the iPhone 4S we are not inferior, from the dual core aspect we are one step ahead. Our sales efforts, with the handsets, and new dmenu and dmarket, mobile wallet, 1-seg, Xi — with these new features we can solidly compete. We feel that we can fully compete.

From today: Actress Maki Horikita, Docomo CEO Ryuji Yamada, Actor Ken Watanabe