Mr. Yuuki Takahashi, New Products Team Manager, Girls Toy Department Mr. Makoto Araki, New Products Team, Girls Toy Department Ms. Kasumi Nakanishi, Public Relations Team Leader, Office of the President

BANDAI has been actively deploying businesses focused on character products and launching various hit products such as "Tamagotchi", "Gundam Plamodel (GunPla)" etc. since its foundation in July 1950 in Taito-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Still now, BANDAI is continuously leading the Japanese toy industries with its corporate vision "The world's most inspiring company".

Kid's Keitai "papipo!"

The PHS handset "Kid's Keitai™ "papipo!"" equipped with multifunction communication module W-SIM (WILLCOM-Subscriber Identification Module) of WILLCOM, Inc. (WILLCOM) is to be launched by BANDAI in June 2006.
An interview was conducted with M/s Takahashi/Araki (Girls Toy Department) and Ms. Nakanishi (Public Relations Team) about "papipo!".

BANDAI has originally been deploying keitai (mobile phone in Japanese) type toy "MeruPuchi" since May 2002 and sold approximately 800 thousand units within four years or so. Its latest model has an IrDA port capable of communicating with the real mobile phone in addition to camera and color LCD screen so its functions have already become just like such phone. The remaining function seems to be actually voice only ("Hello, Hello Keitai"). Further, the result of user questionnaires to children always showed that the mobile phone is the favorite item to have. There's also the result of marketing research that the children tend to want what adults have. Considering those, we've finally reached a conclusion that only BANDAI can realize keitai what children really want and feel pleasant to have and this is how we've decided to develop "papipo!".

There were three major reasons why we've selected the PHS as a communication system. Firstly, the PHS which can set the reasonable fee met the preconditions for system selection because its users are children.
Secondly, its low SAR(*) was a decisive factor. We heard that WILLCOM's PHSs have already been used in more than 3,000 medical facilities or care service spots. Because that the target users of the product of this time are children, we think that there should be a very big merit of adopting the PHS which is said to have much lower SAR than the mobile phones.

* SAR (Specific Absorption Rate)
Technical standard for wireless telephone's radio wave energy absorbed by the human body. It's given by an average energy (watt) absorbed by the unit weight (kg) of the human brain. Human-friendly and safe "Low Radio Power Emission Keitai"

All WILLCOM's wireless telephones are superior in saving energy and have quite low radio power emission so that they've been used in many medical facilities and care service spots including more than 3,000 hospitals throughout Japan. All WILLCOM's wireless telephones' SAR have fully cleared the Japanese domestic SAR limit of 2.0w/kg.
(Source : http://www.willcom-inc.com/ja/service/reliability_safety/index.html)

Thirdly, WILLCOM's W-SIM plan was actually the top reason for our selecting the PHS. It was difficult for us to develop the product stuffed with a lot of wireless know-hows by ourselves and there was also a merit of reducing the development period and cost by using W-SIM we think.

As the result of an opinion poll on the Internet, the top reason for parents to think necessary to give their children keitai was the "Crime Prevention". While incidents involving children are increasing, more than half of the guardians of children seem to be paying attention to keitai as a crime prevention tool. From the standpoint of "Crime Prevention", location information service is included in the PHS service as well and it enables locating the children's position roughly. It has an advantage of being available even in the room or basement where the GPS is weak to catch the location information. Further, "papipo!" has an emergency button enabling one-touch dialing to the preset number, exclusive locking screw to prevent unnecessary battery removal, safety mode against harmful websites which can block calls and mails from unknown senders so it's perfect in terms of safety and security. However, an ideal keitai what BANDAI is thinking would be somewhat different from which the parents thought necessary to give their children for "Crime Prevention", we aimed at realizing keitai which can inspire the children's pleasure to have. In other words, BANDAI thought that such can realize the true safety. Actually, as the result of a group interview with the schoolchildren, there were many opinions that they felt games, cameras, music etc. are pleasant than phone conversation and this fact indicates that keitai is rather a dream box than telephone for them. In this point, an existing just "Crime Prevention" keitai which children are forced by parents to have is only a safe keitai, however, if it's designed by BANDAI, it can be transformed drastically into the true "Pleasure plus Safety & Security" keitai by merging BANDAI's essence of "Pleasant" with the PHS's (W-SIM) strong point of "Safety & Security".