Year: <span>2005</span>
Year: 2005

Year: 2005

Atheros Communications Introduces First Single-Chip Cellular Solution

Atheros Communications, Inc., a leading developer of advanced wireless solutions, today announced the company’s first cellular solution, the Atheros AR1900. In a single chip, the AR1900 implements a complete cellular transceiver, baseband, application processor, audio paths, power management, and keypad, display and USB interfaces. Through this high level of integration coupled with the addition of new industry leading features, the AR1900 enables industry-leading performance at a price that is designed to fuel further market growth. The AR1900 is the first product to leverage a platform of innovative technologies developed by Atheros over the last year, including audio, voice, low-power battery operation and novel RF architectures. The AR1900 is the world’s first single-chip solution for PHS (Personal Handyphone System), which is widely deployed in China, Japan, Taiwan and other countries.

Sweet New Sanyo 3G Phone

KDDI has just announced a new addition to their line-up of 3G handsets made by Sanyo [.jpg image] to go on sale starting tomorrow in the Kanto region. Aside from glowing candy colors like “Pink Mousse” and “Mango Pudding” — sure to please the young, hip, teen crowd — it also has a unique GPS function so the parents will know where the kids are located when they send email. The ultra-high-density QVGA display combined with ‘Smart-Mode’ and ‘friendly design’ also has BREW, QR code reading and Navi-Walk functions onboard, making it a certain smash hit with the ‘tween crowd this spring.

Intel's New Power-Saving Chip

Called Dynamic Power Coordination, or DPC, the technology is a way to conserve energy in dual-core chips, stated Mooly Eden, vice president of the Mobility Group at Intel. When workloads are light, DPC will slow down one processor core to extend battery life. DPC will be integrated into Yonah, Intel’s first dual-core chip for notebooks, which will arrive in late 2005 or early 2006. Eden will demonstrate DPC at the Intel Developer Forum taking place in Japan April 7 and 8.

Wireless Web Access up in 2004

Japan and the advancing markets saw the largest year-on-year growth among adults who used the Internet via a wireless connection. However, wireless population growth was largely driven by the two biggest Internet markets, the U.S. and Japan, fuelling 69 percent of user increase and adding an estimated 15 million and 11.6 million new wireless Internet users, respectively. Wireless Internet also gained some popularity in Western Europe, South Korea and Urban China.

Vodafone KK Expands Roaming Areas

Vodafone K.K. announced today that it will expand global roaming service areas for Vodafone live! and mobile data communications to 51 countries and regions as of 30 March 2005. Since launching its 3G service in December 2002, Vodafone K.K. has tied up with operators outside Japan providing W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS network services. In addition to offering voice roaming, Vodafone K.K. has also enabled its customers to access mobile data communications services abroad with the same Vodafone K.K. handset that they use in Japan.

Mobile Flat-Rate Voice Planned

Willcom Inc., Japan’s largest personal handy-phone system (PHS) company, said Tuesday it will introduce a flat rate for voice communication starting 1 May, becoming the first domestic wireless carrier to provide such service. It said the service will allow users to call fellow Willcom PHS users for unlimited minutes for 2,900 yen per month. Willcom, formerly DDI Pocket Inc., was bought out from KDDI Corp. by the U.S. investment firm Carlyle Group.

It's Quiet on Tokyo's Mobile Street. Too Quiet.

Checking headlines around the Web yesterday and today, I was struck by the eerie silence on Tokyo’s mobile street. There is a ton of coverage on the Livedoor/Fuji TV take-over battle, but that’s largely a Web/media topic and not really related to mobile. Where’s all the silence coming from? And could it be related to Vodafone, Softbank or flat-rate mobile voice calling? To be sure, we’re not totally lacking mobile news; DoCoMo have posted a couple of releases in the past two weeks, including the 22 February announcement of Mobile FeliCa, see WWJ’s video coverage here and the 8 March notice on the launch of the N700i and P700i 3G FOMA handsets. Similarly, KDDI have some releases up (but only in Japanese; nothing in English since 8 February), notably on their new W31S music-player form-factor celly from Sony Ericsson.

KDDI's EZ Channel TV

KDDI have just announced that as of 7 April they will have a total of 36 channels available on the WIN platform’s “EZ Channel” video content service. New additions include pro baseball, language lessons and an extreme sports program, X Games, from Walt Disney Japan. Customers can start signing up next week to see introduction program previews and, we guess, finally buy into a flat-rate packet data plan (if they haven’t already).

Japan Rail, DoCoMo State Mobile Suica Plans

Mobile Suica Launch VideoRecently, East Japan Rail (JR East) and NTT DoCoMo held a press event in Tokyo to announce the January 2006 start of “Mobile Suica” which will allow i-mode phones to serve as train tickets. WWJ’s Gail Nakada filed her report here and today’s video program gives you a ring-side seat to learn how Big D and JR plan to win over the hearts, minds and wallets of millions of mobile-phone using commuters (and most of them are). As you’re watching today’s press conference, there are several key points to keep in mind. First, until now, it has in fact not been possible to use your phoneas a train ticket in Japan. Despite all the live demonstrations, trade show hypeand media speculation around FeliCa, the FeliCa-based Suica cards used by JR andthe FeliCa-based i-mode handsets sold by DoCoMo have been incompatible. Yes, you could use your FeliCa handsets to buy a ticket, but the phone itself was not the ticket.