There has been a fair amount of speculation (see here and here) about pricing strategies, related to future handset subsidies and voice minute charges, for mobile operators in Japan based on regulation suggestions made in a recent report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Emblaze Mobile announced an agreement with Sharp and ACCESS to develop what it calls a design to set new standards for the next generation of mobile devices. Acording to this press release the device is a ‘result of over five years of design by Emblaze Mobile in cooperation with some of the best Israeli high-tech companies and it utilizes some of the most advanced technologies in the mobile computing arena’. The mystery unit is slated for debut sometime next year.
Toshiba has announced that they will bring the universe of Japanese manga to the global market with the launch of MangaNovel, an on-line service that allows readers not only to download and read manga in Japanese but to post and offer for sale translations of content in other languages. Apparently the product will be used at MIT to help students study Japanese pop culture and comics.
US-based ScanR will provide their new service to KDDI customers via the EZWeb official contents portal as of October 4th 2007, press release [in Japanese] Here. “ScanR” creates PDF files of documents and business cards from user-generated cameraphone images, and stores those files online to deliver via FAX or e-mail. The service, which can also automatically transcode business card information into file data to be compiled onto the address book of your mobile phone, is on display in KDDI’s booth at CEATEC this week.
Adobe announced the availability of Flash Lite 3 at MAX 2007 in Chicago for handset makers, operators and content providers. Both NTT DoCoMo and Nokia are committed to deliver enabled devices, which will support .flv compatible video, in upcoming releases of handsets. With over 300 Million Flash enabled mobile devices and handsets shipped so far, Adobe expects more than one billion Flash enabled devices to be available by 2010.
Yet another successful event for in the massive Makuhari Messe convention center saw almost 200,000 pass through the gates for TGS 2007. Aaaah.. the chaos, the crowds, the girls games.. how could we resist! A sunny Saturday afternoon brought out the kids – for family day – and plenty of Cosplay actors were swarming between show halls to pose down for the camera’s. But the real action, coming from every major player in the gaming world, was inside. WWJ has been on-hand for this event pretty much every year since 2002, with the first-to-web video of the Sony PSP in 2004, and this time out was perhaps the most impressive yet.
The obvious evolution on display was without a doubt the next gen. motion-sensor enabled Mega Games at the DoCoMo booth. While KDDI rolled-out the heavy armor with Metal Gear Solid and BioHazzard for mobile RPG products, the display which seems to have grabbed the most attention was from SoftBank Mobile. Thanks to Darth and the Tokyo StormTroopers, who un-leashed the new Star Wars PodRacer game, we were hooked from Go!
The 3rd annual MobileMonday Global Summit was held in Helsinki, Finland, on 10 September with an estimated 1,500 attendees; this year included a bonus side-trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, the following evening. WWJ was there once again, as founders of the MoMo Tokyo chapter, along with representatives from over 20 MoMo cities around the world. In addition to our Trip Report, WWJ’s ed-in-chief Daniel Scuka offers these thoughts about the experience.
Based on the success of the original InfoBar model, the first handset from KDDI’s in-house design team which was released in October 2003, followed by the same candy bar styled Talby by Marc Newson a year later, the AU Design Project has just announced the long-awaited InfoBar2. Available on Oct.31st in four colors, this latest model touts a 2.6-wide inch QVGA organic EL display with a 1Seg digital tv tuner, FeliCa m-commerce and GPS functionality. The full specs (in Japanese) are available Here.
Softbank Corp. is in the final stage of talks with access service provider Nifty Corp., and other firms, on a plan to set up a new joint company in order to apply for a 2.5GHz spectrum license. Other possible partners are broadband service provider eAccess Ltd. and Internet access providers So-net Entertainment Corp., NEC Biglobe Ltd and FreeBit Co., according to this report on EE Times.
Nokia and G-mode announced at the Tokyo Game Show that they are collaborating to bring more mobile multiplayer games to the global market. G-mode is developing Chess a Moment, an online and turn-based chess game, based on the Nokia SNAP Mobile platform. Players can compete in up to eight live games simultaneously, and have up to 30 hours to ponder their next move. Nokia plans to distribute Chess a Moment on select Nokia handsets, and make the game available for global operator-assisted download, consumers can expect to get their hands on G-mode’s Chess a Moment in the fourth quarter of 2007.
