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

Year: 2004

3G Finally Dawneth in Japan

The latest haul of subscriber figures from Japan’s Telecommunications Carriers Association told their usual tale of victory and triumph for most, and misery for some. Three guesses for who did what! Vodafone Japan added a paltry 64,100 subscribers to raise its subscriber base to 15.1 million. But in the hot-house-, typhoon-yielding-, and subscriber-base-wilting-month of June, DoCoMo and KDDI/au managed to pull in 166,000 and 157,000, respectively. Better still, FOMA’s 3G ascendancy seems secure and the pace of uptake is accelerating, while CDMA 1X continues to do rather well, thank you very much. Key message: if you ain’t got 3G in Japan, you’re nowhere (or Roppongi Hills).

Symbian Settles Share Structure

Symbian announced today the completion of the preemption process for the sales of Psion’s shares confirming that all the shareholders (except Samsung) were to exercise their rights. The real significance of today’s announcement is the clear roadmap, supported by a cash injection and an increase in headcout of 300 over the next 18 months, to drive the Symbian OS into mid-tier devices by, among other things, bringing down the bill of materials for the OS phone from today’s minimum of $132 to $78 by 2008.

NEC Battles Exploding Batteries

After fake batteries have caused some Nokia mobile phones to explode, IDG reports today that NEC Electronics Corp. said that it has tweaked its — get ready for this — CipherUnicorn-S encryption technology which verifies battery authenticity in cellies, digital cameras, and other gadgets.

Before Pocket Rockets Were Tiny

One of the world’s telecom R&D powerhouses, NTT DoCoMo, has released a fascinating report reviewing the advances in cell phone technologies that enable today’s tiny, portable pocket rockets to surf the Web, transmit multimedia mail, and play sophisticated games. In 1985, the first Japanese mobile phone that could be used away from a car battery supply was called the “Shoulder Phone” and weighed in at about 3 kilograms.

ACCESS Partners with Datang to Power 3G Data Services in China

ACCESS, a global provider of Internet access technologies, today announced that ACCESS has partnered with Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co., Ltd. (Datang), to provide the enabling technology for advanced mobile services over TD-SCDMA networks. Datang of China is a leading mobile technology provider and the creator of TD-SCDMA, China’s homegrown 3G standard. Under the agreement, ACCESS will work closely with Datang to jointly develop technology specifications and go-to-market business strategies for new client-end data solutions on 3G handsets. Further, ACCESS will provide its industry leading NetFront Mobile Client Suite, including key applications such as the micro-browser, messaging client and Java virtual machine to TD-SCDMA related handset vendors.