Year: <span>2005</span>
Year: 2005

Year: 2005

NTT DoCoMo to Launch N700i and P700i 3G FOMA Handsets

DoCoMo, Inc. announced the launch of the N700i and P700i, the last two handsets in the new 3G FOMA 700i series, through DoCoMo sales channels nationwide on March 11. The N700i comes in three stylish body colors, which can be combined with any of ten snap-on Style Plus custom jackets for a total of 33 color combinations. Both the handset body and custom jackets have antibacterial surfaces. The P700i, the lightest FOMA handset available, features an expansive 2.2″ QVGA LCD screen and high-performance 1.25-megapixel camera. The body is stylishly texturized and color choices are thoughtfully matched to preinstalled icon-based menus and standby screens.

Vodafone K.K. Feb Subs Good & Bad

Vodafone Japan have released their February subscriber numbers to the media and there is good news and bad. The loss of 2G subscribers continued unabated from January, but 3G users still grew nicely (although not as much as in the previous month). The company reports 2G users shrank by 201,200 from 14,625,000 in January to 14,423,800 as of 28 February; 3G users grew by 148,000 from 527,300 in January to 675,300. Optimists will conclude that 3G grew by 28.1 percent month-on-month far outpacing 2G’s losses (which only shrank by 1.4 percent). Pessimists will conclude that Big V is still in a whole lot of trouble.

KDDI Opens Hip Harajuku Design Studio

Harajuku Design StudioKDDI has opened an Alpha Pup playland for its mobile universe right in the heart of Tokyo fashion central — Harajuku. Five floors of interactive phones and games, KDDI Designing Studio sits strategically at the mouth of Takeshita Dori at one of the area’s busiest intersections.

At the ribbon-cutting ceremony on 3 March, we listened to KDDI’s President Tadashi Onodera describing the strategy behind the choice of locations, saying the company has to synch with the needs and wants of its customers and their changing lifestyles: “It is Harajuku that draws the opinion leaders of Japan’s youth culture.” Youth culture is a prime focus for Japan’s top 3G provider. Their Chaku Uta Full music download system and EZ Game Street mobile gaming portal are exactly what the pediatrician ordered for young mobile slackers looking for portable fun. The company hopes a flood of trendy pop princes and princesses will wash through Designing Studio’s sliding glass doors, reaching out for KDDI’s cutting-edge techno fun as they flow on through.

KDDI Cell Phones Get Smart Tagged

Japan’s KDDI/au introduced two different prototype smart-tag mobile phones to the media. One handset is equipped for close-up scanning from just a few centimeters and another reads data as far away as 10 meters. Combined with GPS global positioning networks these handsets could download coupons and ads from nearby stores, receive and store data for distribution companies or scan merchandise right over the phone to link up with detailed shopping info on the Internet. Of course QR codes are already doing some of these things but smart tags bypass a lot of intermediate steps to cut to the encrypted chase.

Omron Announces 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' for Mobile Phones

OMRON Corporation, a global leader in automation, sensing and control technology, has announced “OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor”, a world first* in face recognition technology which can be implemented in PDAs, mobile phones or other mobile devices with a camera function. The ability to recognize and verify the authenticity of the user through face recognition is meant to contribute to greater security and safety for mobile devices, and the information they contain, in the future. The technology will be on show at the “Security Show Japan 2005”, which will be held at the Tokyo Big Site from March 2nd to March 4th, 2005.