NTT DoCoMo, Inc., announced today that it will establish a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, named DoCoMo Capital, Inc., to invest in venture companies that develop advanced mobile communication technologies. The subsidiary will take stakes in venture companies, mainly in the United States, to support their development of innovative technologies. Based in San Jose, California, the subsidiary is scheduled to begin operating on 1 July 2005.
After a ton of work, the new Mobile Monday Tokyo site is live! The website will serve as the primary platform for MoMo Tokyo events, news, networking, community building and anything else that we (you) can think of. See you at MoMo!
As all Wireless Watchers will know, the youth market in the Asia-Pacific region is becoming a significant driver for growth in the region’s mobile-phone market, according to a report by In-Stat. Around 10-15 percent of all youth disposable income is spent on mobile products in developed countries, displacing spending on traditional youth products like clothing, toys, comic books, etc., while messaging accounted for 40.3 percent of Asian mobile youth data expenditures in 2004.
Kyocera Corp. will from the end of the month start outsourcing production of mobile phones sold in the US market to Singaporean firm Flextronics International Ltd., the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, without identifying its sources. Earlier this year, Kyocera moved production of its phone handsets to Mexico from the US in a bid to improve profitability. But with the group handset business still suffering a 14.9 bn yen loss for the year ended 31 March, Kyocera decided to go one step further and move production to an outside company, the financial daily said.
Airspan Networks said Monday that it would allow Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe to resell its WiMAX base-station products. Specifically, Fujitsu will resell the HiperMAX, MacroMAX and MicroMAX base stations, as well as the EasyST and ProST customer premises equipment, which use the Intel “Rosedale” WiMAX chipset. Airspan also clarified the timing of the EasyST’s deployment, which will occur during the third quarter.
Japan Airlines says it will expand its in-flight Internet connection service to flights between Tokyo and New York (JL006/005) from 10 May 2005; this will be the world’s first service on a transpacific flight according to the company. Provided by Connexion by Boeing Inc. (CBB) — a business unit of Boeing — the “JAL Inflight Internet Service” enables passengers to use their own wireless LAN-compatible personal computers to enjoy real-time Internet access during flight. Initially the service will be available on alternate days but towards the end of June it will be available daily. JAL’s Tokyo-New York route is popular with business travelers, who represent a high percentage of total passengers.
