Year: <span>2008</span>
Year: 2008

UQ Selects Fujitsu's Mobile WiMAX

Fujitsu has announced that its outdoor base station for mobile WiMAX, BroadOne WX300, was selected by UQ Communications for the company’s nationwide WiMAX services infrastructure in Japan. UQ is jointly owned by KDDI, Intel, JR East, Kyocera, Daiwa and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, and intends to begin offering commercial WiMAX service in Japan starting in 2009 according to the press release issued by Fujitsu.

Mitsubishi Exits Mobile Handset Business

The official announcement from Mitsubishi Electric indicating they will exit the mobile handset business just hit the newswire. Noting fierce competition and downtrending market share they are the second Japanese ODM to terminate their manufacturing operations this fiscal year. According to their statement, the company estimates 2.1 million units sold over the year for approx. $1 billion and plans to “maintain and further strengthen the partnership with NTT DoCoMo through the communication related business”, essentially so-called ‘hard iron’ base station network segment.

Disney Mobile Japan Hits the Street

Backed by their telecom operator partner SoftBank Mobile, and with Hillary Duff as the campaign face, SoftBank Mobile held splashy launch parties in locations around Tokyo this week-end. Drawing attention to the companies branded offerings, with over 3 million content subscribers established in Japan over their last seven years operating here, the new MVNO is bullish about it’s domestic market potential. They have indicated a target segment focus, young women, and have a strong industry partners in SoftBank Mobile, including Yahoo!, to run a viable service offering.

Nokia Growth Partners Buys into Japan

Morpho, Inc., provider of image processing software solutions for mobile devices, has announced that it received an investment in the amount of 165 Million JPY (approx. $150 Million) from Nokia Growth Partners, the venture capital arm of Nokia. The investment from Nokia Growth Partners, its first ever in a Japanese company, follows Morpho’s recent announcement that it had received an investment from DoCoMo. With these latest rounds of funding Morpho plans to grow its overseas operations to meet the increasing demands of customers worldwide.

Toshiba Introduces RoboPhone

Softbank Mobile has announced this Toshiba made 815T PB handset with an uber-cool Robo Design which is sure to grab lots of mainstream, not too mention full-blown geek luvin, media buzz. This transfomer styled device features a 2.4 inch QVGA screen, 2MP camera, music player, IrDA, Felica e-wallet and microSD card slot along with Push-to-Talk and usual slate of services.

Japan Launches (Big) Kizuna Satellite

KIZUNA (WINDS) was recently launched from the Tanegashima Space Center with the goal to establish the world’s most advanced information and telecommunications network. It will enable high-speed, large-volume data transmission, allowing ultra-fast domestic and international Internet-based communications with an expected network speed and capacity much higher than anything achieved previously, according to the JAXA announcement. The proposed system aims for a maximum speed of 155Mbps downlink and 6Mbps uplink for households with 45-centimetre dish, and ultra-high speed 1.2 Gbps connection for offices with five-meter antennas.

HTC Announces Titan II for eMobile

HTC has just confirmed [.pdf in Japanese] the introduction of their HTC TyTN II – or Titan Two – which will become available for sale in Japan on Friday, March 28, 2008 via eMobile, under the product name “S11HT (EMONSTER)”. The HTC TyTN II will be the first device from eMobile supporting broadband voice services and this handset is the eighth model, including designs scheduled for future release, from the HTC lineup to appear in Japan.

Pocket Film Festival Opens in Japan

The Pocket Film Festival in Japan, showing movies made entirely on mobile phone cameras, kicked-off today in Yokohama. Forty-eight films, chosen from more than 400 entries from 18 countries — including Japan, Singapore, China, South Korea and Germany — will screen in competition at the weekend event, organized by the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The competition has two categories, one for films to be shown on regular screens and the other for films to be viewed on phones. The winning film will receive 500,000 yen (US$4,500).

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC Announce JV

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC announced the start of a broad collaboration to market advanced end-to-end communications solutions. Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have decided to form a joint venture that will focus on the development of Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband access solutions. Through this joint development effort, the two companies intend to accelerate the availability of next-generation wireless solutions.

KDDI Introduces AU Beauty Portal for Women

KDDI and Mediba have announced [in Japanese] a new fixed/ mobile portal called “Au one beauty” with useful information targeted at female users. The service, searchable anytime and anywhere will provide; popular cosmetic ranking, spa and esthetics salon suggestions along with famous beauty analyst articles to answer needs of women who “want to become beautiful” all offered free of charge.