NEC Corp. has developed a cellular telephone with digital camera function that is the size of a credit card, and plans to unveil it next week. Few details of the telephone are available at present and NEC is expected to announce its development and the name of a launch customer at a Tokyo news conference scheduled for Tuesday.
KDDI, Japan’s number two wireless carrier, has both been surging ahead of DoCoMo and Vodafone K.K. with its new net adds over the last quarter, and in profits. Last Friday, Jan 30, the company announced that its net profit grew 140.5% to 123.4 billion yen ($1.2 billion) for the quarter ending December 30, 2003 compared to last year.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that after early April it will market the V801SH by Sharp, a new Vodafone Global Standard (VGS) 3G handset compatible with Vodafone live! for use both in Japan and abroad. The V801SH is a dual mode handset capable of operating on Vodafone’s 3GPP-based W-CDMA network in Japan and roaming on GSM networks worldwide.
The government-affiliated Communications Research Laboratory and private-sector companies will team up with Chinese research institutions and firms this autumn on a project to develop a technology standard for 4G mobile telephony, sources familiar with the matter said. NTT Communications Corp, KDDI Corp, Hitachi, Ltd, NEC Corp and Fujitsu Ltd will also be among the Japanese participants.
Japan’s Communication Research Laboratory (CRL) plus NTT Communications, KDDI, Hitachi and Fujitsu are teaming up with the China Academy of Telecommunications Research, the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and some local carriers to formulate and develop an 4G standard and to fight off the ITU’s standardization bid…
The acceleration of DoCoMo’s fantastically subsidized FOMA handset uptake continues apace, with the company today announcing that subscriptions have just topped 2 million, about 2 months ahead of DoCoMo’s deliberately conservative estimates. (Once bitten, forever shy?) For a benchmark comparison, this places DoCoMo about 2 million handsets ahead of Vodafone K.K.’s 3G subscriber base and about 8 million behind KDDI’s. Still, it’s a nice christening present for the new and beautiful 900i handsets that the company is going to let loose on the network next month. See the DoCoMo press release for more details.
