Japanese telco NEC and Siemens Communications announced that they are assisting Hutchison 3G Ireland in deploying its W-CDMA/UMTS 3G network. The announcement represents the eighth Hutchison 3G network deployment that NEC and Siemens have been involved in. NEC and Siemens are the suppliers of 3G network solutions to Hutchison 3G in Austria, Hong Kong, Italy and the UK as well.
Namco announced the world’s first international cross-network operator mobile games tournament. The tournament is open to every i-mode phone owner on all of the mobile networks in Europe where Namco offers its PAC-MANTMARCADE site. The tournament is based around Namco’s brand-new high-score version of PAC-MAN, which allows users to upload their highest scores from the mobile version of PAC-MAN to compare it with other users, locally and internationally.
Ever had someone peek over your shoulder to see what’s on your cell-phone screen? Maybe you don’t want to share that latest hot stock tip or expose the lowest possible Tetris skill of all time. Then you’ve got to get a Magic Screen. When viewing the handset display directly, it’s clear and easy to read. However, when viewed at even a slight angle to either side — Abracadabra! — the Magic Screen’s holographic reflective technology blocks nosey parkers.
These simple LCD stickers have started to become pretty popular (think cell-phone straps 2.0) over the last six months or so here and all the usual suspects — from Disney to Kitty to Playboy — have licensed their famous brand characters. We noticed just yesterday that even Star Wars’ Darth Vader can be enlisted (for a paltry 900 yen) to protect all your sensitive info from those pesky subway peepers (the Yoda version — ‘Keep our data safe we must’ — was sold out). WWJ subscribers login for some full-resolution photos.
Amp’d Mobile announced its acquisition of NINJA Mobile’s development division, which will become a part of Amp’d Mobile while NINJA focuses on expanding its mobile publishing business. The acquisition includes NINJA’s esteemed United States and Japanese development teams and NINJA’s “Rope Platform” technology. NINJA’s Rope Platform is the base upon which the Amp’d community, blogging, dating, commerce, multiplayer gaming, location-based and additional server-driven applications, are being built.
The recent guest article, Mobile Music Best Practices from Japan and Korea, has resulted in some interesting comments on the web. It seems that the long- wrong-held belief about Japan’s mobile success story is still being attributed to the “There are relatively few people in Japan with a home-based Internet connection, making the mobile Internet more attractive” syndrome. However, it’s clear according to the ITU that Japan’s Internet and PC adoption rates have been much the same as, or even better than, the adoption rates in European countries such as France, Germany and the UK since at least 2001. Another comment we saw regarding the Chaku-uta Full song downloads explained in the article said “it seems to me it may be being marketed (and more importantly used) more as a next-generation ring-tone service than as a true music service”.
This is incorrect. Today in Japan, marketing to encourage customers to upgrade and listen to full-track music on their new mobile devices is everywhere; in print, outdoor and on television commercials, we are seeing massive “i-pod-meets-mobile-phone” promotions. Hence the stereo headphones and J-pop artists making regular appearances to help push the product. Sure, people can use full songs as ring-tones as well (that’s a bonus), but that is not how Chaku-uta Full is be marketed or — more importantly — being used. (And you don’t have to take our word for it. Visit KDDI’s Ad Index site and surf around to watch their current selection of TV commercials.)
DoCoMo will release a new mobile handset able to slow down speakers’ voice speed later this month. The key targeted users are the elderly. The speed converter technology used in the handset slows down speakers’ voice speed up to 0.7x, so the listener can feel like that the speakers’ dialogue goes slowly. By reducing the number of menu items as well as using relatively large icons, screen operation became easier than before. The unit also features an emergency 80 dB alarm system and a built-in pedometer.
