UNISK, formed by SK Telecom and China Unicom, is China’s first joint venture telecom service provider that operates with both foreign and national companies. Their pilot service launched on March 13th, one month later, it had obtained about 40 thousand subscribers for the monthly flat rate. The UNISK wireless Internet portal service is offering approximately 2,700 types of content, in five categories, in China.
Kyocera has unveiled the AH-K3001V handset [image] for the Japanese market. It’s the first handset available in Japan that uses the Opera browser to access the Internet. The phone is fully Opera-branded, including an Opera-branded softkey that brings users online for Web surfing. The AH-K3001V will be available to DDI Pocket AirH” subscribers by mid-May.
Due on the street in Japan this June, we think this could turn out to be a very disruptive technology for digital broadcasters. Japanese firm Solid Alliance, in partnership with Mitsubishi Plastics, Media Ring, and Connect Technologies, has come up with a little pyramidal device [.jpg image] that hooks up to your TV and records video in 3GPP format onto an SD or miniSD card for playback on a cellphone. Two hours’ worth of programming will fit on a 128-megabyte card, and can be played back on any of DoCoMo’s recent FOMA phones or most of the newer Vodafone handsets.
Oki Electric and NTT Communications announced that they have developed a new automated teller machine (ATM) that can exchange data with infrared port-equipped mobile devices including cellphones. The new ATM enables account holders to withdraw cash and check the balance using a mobile phone [.jpg image] just as if they do with a cash card.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that after late May it will offer the new KOTO -V303T- model by Toshiba with a look that fuses elements of traditional Japanese and modern designs. The KOTO is a design model that combines traditional Japanese and modern elements based on the concept of universal beauty in the present. In addition to incorporating elements of the koto form, the dial keys have been delicately constructed like koto strings.
Reporting net income up nearly 400% year-over-year, Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm said “Our financial results reflect the strong acceptance and rapid global growth of 3G CDMA”. Early 3G CDMA entrants continue to perform well, KDDI, the first CDMA operator in Japan, announced its sixth consecutive month as the leading Japanese operator in net subscriber additions, and now has approximately 14 million subscribers on its 3G network.
Wireless Watchers will have noted that it’s changing-of-the-guard season in Japan, with NTT DoCoMo’s Keiji Tachikawa about to move on just as the company enters a self-described “paradigm shift.” We believe we know what his successor, Executive Vice President Shiro Tsuda, will be up to — mainly because DoCoMo strives at every opportunity these days to tell one and allit’s not a carrier any more, but rather a budding e-commerce service platform provider. More intriguing, however, are the senior staff developments at Vodafone’s struggling Japan opco, Vodafone KK (struggling, that is, through a device dry spell that won’t see any significant new 3G models out until the fall). Big V has just shipped over a new COO, David Jones, who has arrived, we guess, with a briefcase full of spring-cleaning items. Certainly the appointment of a new chief operating officer hints at a change of gear for the company. Is this a push to boost the lagging 3G provider from neutral to at least first gear?
KDDI has set a new usage fee of 95 yen per usage for EZNaviwalk, a GPS based location idenfication service for pedestrians. EZNaviwalk’s monthly service fees are 315 yen or less, and beginning the end of this April, the service will be available for one time users for 95 yen for a period of 24 hours. EZNaviwalk “navigates” users to destinations by showing on their handset screens their current location and their ultimate destinations which could be shops and restaurants.
Highly sophisticated cellular phones are also starting to care for their owners by warning them of their health problems or by keeping them safe in case of emergency. LG hooked up with Healthpia, the health-related venture start-up to churn out diabetes phones within a couple of months for the first time in the world. The new-concept phone is equipped with a microchip, which can measure the human body’s glucose, a sugar that comes from food, thus keeping the handset owners informed of their status.
NTT announced it will launch an official “uefa.com” site for i-mode mobile with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The service is set to begin on April 19, 2004. They will provide the latest highlights from the official Japanese UEFA site “jp.uefa.com,” including updates from games such as the UEFA Champions League and UEFA EURO 2004. Other features will include interviews with popular players, information about individual players and their teams, and a variety of screensavers.
