EAccess Ltd applied on Dec 3 to Japan’s Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT) for a license to build test stations for a mobile telecommunications service adopting TD-CDMA. EAccess, an asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) operator, aims to launch a wireless ADSL service specializing in data communications. The company has applied for several base stations in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Proxim Corporation, a leader in wireless networking equipment for Wi-Fi and wide area networks, announced recently that Guangdong Unicom, a provincial subsidiary of China Unicom Limited, has selected Proxim’s Tsunami MP point-to-multipoint broadband wireless products to establish China’s largest high capacity wireless network, delivering Voice over IP and Internet connections throughout China’s Guangdong province.
Vodafone K.K. announced today it will expand its open content charge service to allow for the billing of V-applis starting late January 2004. The open content charge service is a system where Vodafone live! customers can view open content and have information charges billed directly to their Vodafone account. To coincide with the system’s service expansion for V-applis, Vodafone K.K. will begin accepting applications from interested content providers from December 10.
DoCoMo Chieftain Tachikawa gave his final press conference of the year and looked happier and more relaxed than we’ve seen him for some time. And he should. After good first half financials and FOMA finally taking off, he was able to give a good spin on DoCoMo’s performance and managed to sling an arrow at Microsoft, as only a spin-off from a monopoly can! Japan’s phone market unexpectedly achieved solid 1H growth; net additions were almost the same 1H 03. 2H was down, but overall growth for DoCoMo will be 80 percent of 02. Japan’s phone market is NOT saturated. DoCoMo still thinks it will achieve 8 percent growth. Non-voice is growing, as well as voice. Japan’s penetration rate still lower than Europe. DoCoMo still sees growth opportunities. Full Program Run-time 20:24
Most of Japan’s next-generation cell phones are going to have 2 megapixel cameras next year, right? There is already a supply crunch developing for CMOS sensors, right? The global shipment of cellies is going to near 490 million units in 2004, right? And, finally, Japanese makers are gearing up for an assault on the world market via Vodafone, right? Probably not, don’t think so, well if you are very lucky and Vodafone central is a long way from Tokyo- there is something fishy about Vodafone talking up its love of Japanese handsets…these are the sorts of answers that you get if you talk to IDC Japan’s top wireless device analyst Michito (Mitch) Kimura, who has his own take on things. Recently, WWJ listened in on Kimura’s presentation about camera phone trends, followed up with an interview, and came back with the following snapshot.
DoCoMo and its eight regional subsidiaries today announced the coming release of three new handsets in the 2G mova 505iS series: the SO505iS, a mega-pixel camera phone equipped to play extended-length video files; the N505iS, the first NEC-made camera phone in the mova lineup with 1.3 mega-pixel resolution; and the SH505iS, which comes with a 2.02 mega-pixel, auto-focus camera. The N505iS will be released on December 10, 2003 and the SO505iS and SH505iS will be released on December 12, 2003.
Fujitsu Labs Ltd. said it has developed has developed a gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier capable of 174 watts at 63 volts at 40 percent efficiency. If that doesn’t mean much to you, Fujitsu claims the HEMT will enable it to make more energy efficient 3 (or wasn’t that 4?) G base stations…
NetGear has teamed with Legend Group in China and Softbank BB in Japan to sell Wi-Fi products, an effort to increase sales in Asia–the world’s second largest market for Wi-Fi networking gear. The company sees the Asian market as a major opportunity to improve its position worldwide. Japan, China and South Korea are the top three countries in the Asia-Pacific region in terms of gear sales, according to research firm Synergy Research Group.
Sony announced today that the 13.56 MHz Near Field (NF) Communication technology that’s been under wraps with Royal Philips Electronics has got green lights from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) under the ISO/IEC IS 18092 standard. So now Philips and Sony cards can talk to each other, taking FeliCa –or what it’s now calling the NFC Chips — to cellies, cameras and… knowing Sony, just about anything it can to talk to the Europeans.
Mobile operator M1 of Singapore has awarded Nokia a contract to supply equipment and services for the second phase of its WCDMA 3G network rollout. In addition, the deal includes GSM/GPRS equipment to enhance GSM coverage and GPRS capacity. The deal follows successful rollout of Phase 1 WCDMA 3G network and continued GSM subscriber growth and increase demand in data traffic.
