KDDI has just announced yet another 3G handset, dubbed ‘Talby’ [.jpg image], the third from their in-house Au Design Project. This super-slim fashionable unit, styled by Marc Newson, has a built-in antenna and is set to hit store shelves in Japan by December. It’s a Flash-enabled model with a QVGA screen, 2D bar-code reader, and BREW.
The global mobile commerce market excluding mobile entertainment, will become a $40bn industry by 2009, fuelled by a growth in micropayment volumes, according to a new study from Juniper Research. The purchase of tickets (such as car parking and cinema tickets) using the mobile phone, will dominate the growth in m-commerce. Mobile users have started already to show interest in ticketing particularly in Europe and Japan, while in the retail sector, initial applications are geared towards vending machines, but this will see slow growth.
At virtually every turn, Intel Corp. executives are heaping praise on an emerging long-range wireless technology known as WiMAX, which can blanket entire cities with high-speed Internet access. Market research firm iSuppli on Monday described a largely lackluster outlook for WiMAX, which it said is surrounded by hype and will likely fail to catch on beyond niche applications. Established broadband access providers see no reason to adopt yet another technology for delivering data at high speeds, the company said.
Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Korea’s SK Telecom, South Korea’s biggest mobile-phone operator, agreed to cooperate in providing financial services because of the business growth potential, said Chai Young Hoon, a spokesman for SK Telecom, confirming an earlier Electronic Times report. Preliminary meetings are scheduled for this month and November, he said.
The Asia’s largest IT & Digital Trade Show WPC EXPO 2004 will be held from October 20, Wednesday, through 23, Saturday, at the Tokyo Big Site. The number of exhibitors at the WPC EXPO 10th anniversary will be a total of 323 companies in 1,518 booth units (as of October 5). The show will cover a wide range of digital devices including PCs and peripherals, and also digital home appliances: DVD/HDD recorders, flat-screen televisions, digital cameras, and music players. Furthermore, in the “Business Zone” Hall 1 & 2, forerunner companies from China, Korea and Taiwan will exhibit. Witness the business scene in the Asian countries that lead the world economy.
ACCESS, a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet access technologies, today announced the availability of NetFront v3.2 for the Nokia 6670 smartphone and other Series 60 smartphones. NetFront v3.2 for Nokia Series 60, the latest version of the world’s most widely deployed and actively used embedded browser, provides an optimum browser solution for Series 60 mobile professionals. NetFront v3.2 for Nokia Series 60 will be available as a preinstalled application on the MMC (MultiMedia Card) included with the new Nokia 6670 phone and will also be available from Nokia Software Market (www.softwaremarket.nokia.com) and Handango (www.handango.com) later this month.
