Year: <span>2006</span>
Year: 2006

Year: 2006

World First Mass-producible Polymeric UWB Antenna

Omron announced that it will introduce a new SMD Polymeric Antenna for short-range, wireless Ultra-Wideband (UWB) applications. Product launch is scheduled for June 1, 2006. UWB is a recently commercialized short-range wireless technology, expected to be widely adopted in consumer goods. Applied in dongles, personal computers, printers, mobile telephones, digital televisions and DVD players, UWB functions as a low-power-consuming wireless USB (universal serial bus), allowing users to transfer large amounts of data rapidly between various devices in close range.

InnoPath Appoints New President for Japan

InnoPath Software, Inc. today announced telecommunications industry veteran Shinichi Sawai as the president of InnoPath’s Japan operations. Sawai brings more than 20 years of expertise and knowledge in the Japanese telecommunications industry and will be responsible for continuing InnoPath’s positive growth of influence within the Japanese mobile device management (MDM) market. Sawai recently oversaw the successful promotion of global business for NTT Data Corporation, a system integrator group comprised of 100 subsidiaries and affiliates. Prior to NTT Data Corporation, he played a major role in developing 3G radio systems for Lucent Technologies, Japan.

DoCoMo Sees Finance as Key to Growth

NTT DoCoMo aims to expand in finance and other industries to offset slowing growth in mobile phone services. “If DoCoMo is a mobile phone company in five years, our growth will be limited,” said Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s vice president of multimedia services, said in an interview. “My expectation is to make DoCoMo a more diversified company.” Natsuno, who oversaw the debut of i-mode in 1999, last month introduced the DCMX credit card service that lets customers use handsets to pay for goods and services such as groceries and taxis. The company expects the service to generate as much as 100 billion yen ($912 million) in annual sales in three years.

Softbank and Apple to develop iPod phones

The Japanese Internet service company and the U.S. computer company are expected to launch handsets with the iPod functions as early as this year in Japan. Softbank Corp. and Apple Computer Inc. are planning to jointly develop mobile phones that have built-in iPod digital music players and can download songs directly from Apple’s iTunes Music Store, news reports said Saturday. Kyodo News agency had a similar report.

Japan Ministry to Study Handset Subsidies

Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is considering a plan to allow mobile telephone subscribers to choose lower communications charges in return for paying more for handsets, ministry officials said Friday. At present, mobile phone carriers such as NTT DoCoMo Inc. sell handsets at steep discounts and cover the costs by adding charges to monthly communications rates, creating an unfair cost disadvantage for subscribers who use the same handsets for a long time. The study group is expected to work out a report on the pricing options in July.

DoCoMo Quadruple Play Includes Windows DRM, HSDPA, 7 New Credit-Card Phones

F902iSIn a rare quadruple play, DoCoMo today issued three new handset announcements plus one new technology tie-up press release. The first handset news includes the long-expected new credit-card-enabled phones that will come bundled with the carrier’s ‘DCMX’ Java-and-IC-chip-based credit card. The new 902iS series FOMA 3G handsets mark the latest step in DoCoMo’s transformation from Just Another Mobile Phone Company to full-featured financial services provider.

The carrier also said it had agreed with Microsoft to incorporate Windows Media technologies in DoCoMo’s F902iS 3G handset, to be released this summer. The first-time collaboration means that the F902iS will support both Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 for Portable Devices (WMDRM-PD). The carrier will also evaluate the incorporation of Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s version of SMPTE VC-1 technologies, in future handsets. The press release states that incorporating Windows Media technologies will enable NTT DoCoMo handsets to play music downloaded to a PC from more than 100 online music services around the world, and also support music content ripped from CDs in the highly efficient Windows Media Audio format (login for details).