Year: <span>2004</span>
Year: 2004

Year: 2004

NTT DoCoMo and Motorola Announce 3G FOMA Handset Developement

NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Motorola Inc. and Motorola Japan Ltd. announced today that they have signed an agreement to jointly develop a FOMA handset targeting business users by taking advantage of high-speed 3G FOMA technologies. Commercialization is scheduled for spring 2005. The new handset, which is compatible with GSM/GPRS technologies, will be the first FOMA model that may be used outside of Japan. Unlike i-mode®-capable phones, the handset will enable access to the internet through mopera® or any other available internet connection service. What’s more, its browser will be able to display standard web pages. Full Press Release Here.

NEC Telecom China to Launch Get Personal Brand Strategy

NEC Corporation today announced that NEC Telecommunications (China), a new company and a business entity established in May 2004 to actively pursue mobile solution business in China, introduced a new branding strategy “Get Personal” (Chinese-English translation) to further expand its mobile business in China. Along with the campaign, NEC reveals its new strategy to enter into the mid-low range product market segment to appeal to a wider range of consumers in China. The three N10X series of products with seven color variations, which are also being announced today, are one of the key products for the new strategy.

DoCoMo's F900iC Price Comparisons

The sale of DoCoMo’s F900iC, the only FeliCa-enabled FOMA (3G) terminal, started in Japan the first week of August. Herewith, we present a rough translation of a useful chart showing price breakdowns for all F900i-series handsets now available. We’re (more than a little bit) surprised at how much the upgrade charge (to get the latest model) varies by region. At one electronic retail chain, the new contract price on an F900iC in Tokyo is 33,375 yen; in Osaka, 15,700 yen.

MediaSeek Develops OCR for BREW

MediaSeek announced that it has successfully developed an optical character reader (OCR) engine designed to be used in camera phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. The BREW OCR extension extracts and analyzes text image captured with the built-in camera, enabling users to display actual text data on a mobile device’s screen.

Softbank Testing New 3G Standard

Softbank Corp and eAccess Ltd plan to step up their testing of next-generation cell-phone systems by this fall to collect more data. The companies are working toward launching TDD (time division duplex) cell-phone services, which are suitable for high-speed data communications. Accumulating sufficient test data is deemed key to securing a slot when the Ministry of Telecommunications allocates frequencies for TDD services as early as 2005.

DoCoMo to Launch Motorola 3G Phone

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo will offer a new 3G handset made by Motorola in spring 2005. DoCoMo is also (apparently) planning to supply terminals coming from Nokia as well. The article notes that forcast increasing global demand and product improvements by major overseas manufacturers, indicates a competative creep on the traditional domestic handset makers.