Top executives and analysts from around the world are visiting the Reuters Tokyo bureau, 13-16 September, for the Asia Technology and Telecoms Summit. Reuters’ clients and visitors will be able to read a series of exclusive articles about leaders of industry. They also have posted some interesting video interviews with DoCoMo, Vodafone and new mobile entry eAccess.
The CDMA Development Group (CDG) have announced the winners of the 2005 3G CDMA Industry Achievement Awards, which were presented at the 3G CDMA Americas Congress. “The CDMA community is leading in the delivery of 3G wireless services across the globe and there are many accomplishments to recognize,” said Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG. “The CDG congratulates all recipients of this year’s awards and applauds their contributions to making CDMA2000 the technology of choice for 3G.”
NTT DoCoMo just announced that Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS), NTT DoCoMo’s partner in Russia, began offering i-mode services in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas as of today. Services will eventually be expanded to other business areas of MTS. Russia’s i-mode is being offered via MTS’s GPRS network and represents the twelfth global market for i-mode, following Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Australia and Israel (in order of introduction). MTS is Russia’s leading mobile operator both in terms of subscribers and profitability, according to the DoCoMo press release.
DoCoMo has announced plans to offer an information-capture function, called ToruCa, in their new “Osaifu-Keitai” (Wallet-Phone) compatible handsets to be released this winter. ToruCa will enable users to obtain information by simply waving their phones in front of dedicated reader/writers installed at restaurants, theaters, music stores, arcades and other establishments. For example, when a user buys a CD at a store using the “Osaifu-Keitai,” they can simply wave their DoCoMo phone in front of the store’s reader/writer to retrieve extra information about the CD, artist, etc., and possibly even a promotional coupon offered by the artist’s recording label.
The Seventh International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, UbiComp 2005, was held September 11-14 in Tokyo, Japan. This annual conference provides the premier forum in which to present research results in all areas relating to the design, implementation, application and evaluation of ubiquitous computing technologies, bringing together leading researchers from a variety of disciplines and geographical areas who are exploring the frontiers of computing as it moves beyond the desktop and becomes increasingly interwoven into our mobile lives.
Organized to provide a productive forum in which international researchers and members of the industry can discuss key issues and future uses of ubiquitous computing that create compelling, and socially beneficial experiences, and to facilitate an exchange of ideas that will allow ubiquitous applications to break out of their current “niche” and into the mainstream.
The Communications and Information Network Association of Japan has just released a report detailing the overall value of domestic production for Q1-05. It quoted totals for the April–June quarter at 620.3 billion yen, a reduction of 2.4 percent over the same quarter last year. The total value of production excluding cellular phones was 222.4 billion yen, a growth of 2.5 percent year on year. While network equipment and parts, such as routers and hubs, recorded healthy figures due to the switch to IP and broadband networks, cellular phones, which make up two-thirds of the market, dragged the total figure down, resulting in a slight reduction overall.
The production figure for cellular phones decreased by 5.4 percent over the same quarter of the previous year to 392.5 billion yen, resulting from fewer new subscribers and a negative rebound from the growth spurt in the January–March 2005 quarter. The July–September quarter is expected to return to positive growth with growing demand for IP network equipment and upgrade sales in conjunction with the expansion of 3G cellular phone services.
