DoCoMo announced today they will market the F672i (Raku Raku PHONE III) from September 5, 2003. This is the latest in DoCoMo’s easy-to-use handset series offering a range of innovative and convenient features. As with earlier handsets in the series, three large buttons on the outside of the closed phone each enable one-touch calling to an assigned number without even opening the phone.
The current buzzword in personal electronics is Wi-Fi, but the full potential of the latest laptops, cell phones and PDAs is being held back by batteries that last just a few hours. Major consumer electronics firms like NEC, Toshiba and Motorola, along with a number of startups.. are working on micro fuel cells, which theoretically can generate power 10 times longer than conventional batteries.
As the march towards rich-media solutions for mobile continues, some partsof the evolution remain a challenge – such as common standards and digitalrights management. But the Java virtual machine offers several advantagesfor the carriers, device manufacturers, content developers and end users. This week’s program digs into the details with Tim Smith, managing director of Hello Network Asia. *Disclosure Note* HNA has been an active technology partner for WWJ since our inception. However we strongly feel that this support should not exempt the company from fair coverage of their recent successful mobile application deployments. Full Program Run-time 17:20
iFone Ltd, the leading global wireless entertainment publisher, today announced the creation of content based on QUALCOMM’s Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) platform. The company plans to roll out an extensive catalog of BREW- based titles such as classic Atari favorites Centipede, Asteroids and Breakout. iFone is also creating BREW-based content that takes advantage of the company’s exclusive global wireless rights to Hasbro brands and is planning to offer BREW-based versions of family favorites, including Monopoly, Clue and Battleship.
Talking to an analyst friend today, we came across the question, how many packets are there in a typical 10-minute video clip encoded for a 3G phone? We asked ourselves this question because, just now, the local press in Japan has caught up with DoCoMo’s plans to roll out HSDPA in late 2004, about a month after WWJ reported on it..!!
Applied Materials Inc. today announced its Black Diamond and BLOk low k dielectric films are being used by Toshiba Corporation for volume production of its advanced 90nm CMOS4 process in the Oita, Japan facility, further validating the manufacturability of Applied Materials’ low k films. Toshiba is using Black Diamond and BLOk to deliver higher performance and lower power consumption required for its TC300 family of ASICs, now being incorporated in the latest wireless devices, networking and server products.
NetVillage will collaborate with China Trust Tai-He Digitech Hangzhou (CTTH) to provide content to C-mode PHS services offered by China Telecom and China Netcom. There are about 20 million PHS users in China, and the number is expected to top 26 million by year-end.
Mobile gaming is seen by many as the next big thing, as phones become more powerful and come with colour screens. People are going to be spending millions of pounds to play games on their mobiles by next year, say experts. “This has been a very good year for mobile gaming,” said games consultant Robert Tercek.
Putting its money where its mouth is, NTT DoCoMo is establishing DoCoMo Communications Laboratories Beijing Co. Ltd. to further research on fourth-generation wireless technology. The wireless communications research center will be tasked with researching the technology, as well as promoting it in Japan and China.
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Personal Digital Assistant and a decade of Enfour developing software for mobile platforms. That’s right, Enfour was the first company to develop commerical software for PDAs (back then the Newton) but now for all platforms. In fact, Enfour, Inc. was spun-off from Enfour Media Laboratory specifically to pursue development of software for handheld computers.
