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Sony has just announced that they will be working together with four other companies in Japan; Mitsui & Co. Ltd., Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd., Gourmet Navigator Inc. and Tanseisha Co. Ltd. Each of the companies will be performing different necessary aspects of the project at hand, it is intended that together these companies will be able to establish a type of partnership.

This venture is one that would allow them to focus on the promotion and use of FeliCa cards, which are used primarily when it comes to ticketing or transactions of electronic money.

In Japan, the major trend going on is to have one’s FeliCa card put into their cell phone.  When cell phones are equipped with the FeliCa cards designed by Sony, they are able to be scanned in order to allow easy and effortless data transfers, this turns one’s cell phone into a type of e-bank.

The partnership will not be officially established until January 2008 and the startup capital is estimated to be approximately 400 million yen, or just over 3.5 million U.S. dollars.  Sony will be absorbing the majority of this investment with a 60 percent stake.

While the FeliCa card is not yet a major hit yet within the United States, it has seen a great deal of action in other areas of the world.  Since 1996, Sony has managed to ship more than 250 million FeliCa cards, primarily in Japan and Asian countries such as China and Singapore.

After the announcement of this partnership, the Japanese-based shares of almost all of the companies involved in the collaboration increased.

Via [News.com]