No. 1 mobile phone maker Nokia, planning an aggressive push into video gaming, on Tuesday said it has signed a deal to acquire some assets of Japanese game maker Sega Corp. dedicated to networked game play. Nokia will use the SNAP technology for wireless game matching for its N-Gage phone/game deck combo device, set to be released worldwide on Oct. 7.
As the use of mobile cameras has spread west from Japan, it has been the dark side of photo-messaging that has grabbed headlines. A tsunami of moral panic has followed the adoption in Europe and the US of camera mobiles, focusing mostly on their lewd, pornographic potential or the simple invasion of privacy.
We spent an afternoon at the Symbian Workshop in Tokyo recently and chatted with Nokia’s Gerard Bruen, Director of Series 60 and Alliance Partners. Tune in for a surprisingly candid discussion about what the big push was for this event.. “the Japanese market is sophisticated, the developers have a good understanding, there is a good eco-system already built around financially stable developers and content owners and we should utilize that.. Nokia has the reach to go global, and to take them global”. A must see interview for wireless developers everywhere who are planning their mobile business strategy.
IP Talk Corp is a telecom carrier under the wing of Mitsubishi Electric Corp and it provides an Internet phone service called “IP Talk.” After developing a prototype of a voice over IP (VoIP) mobile phone using wireless LAN in 2002, the company unveiled a plan to start a “wireless IP phone service,” which enables use of IP Talk on the street via wireless LAN access services, within 2003.
Boasting camera phones, Japanese mobile phones are rapidly making inroads into the domestic market and secured a two digit market share alerting domestic companies. There are concerns that Korean companies set up strong bulwark as Nokia and Motorola, the no. 1 and no. 2 mobile phone makers in the world, pulled out of the domestic market or secured a paltry 3 ~ 4% outmaneuvered by home-grown major companies such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel.
China Mobile (H.K.) Ltd., the world’s biggest mobile phone company by users, said its customers spent 16 percent less in the first half and the trend will persist as price competition intensifies with China Unicom Ltd. and other rivals. Net income fell in the second quarter from the previous three months for the first time since China Mobile went public in 1997, as discount services from Unicom and two fixed-line carriers drove down rates.
