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

Year: 2006

Vodafone K.K. Unveils 905SH

Vodafone K.K. today announced the development of the Vodafone 905SH [.jpg] by Sharp, a new 3G handset capable of receiving “One Seg” terrestrial digital TV broadcasts. The new model is planned for release by June 2006, in time for scheduled the upcoming World Cup football matches. This handset features a new Cycloid Style rotating display for easy mobile TV viewing , a design innovation which will enable customers to enjoy digital TV broadcasts in 400 x 240 pixel resolution, full widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio format.

Japan Handsets Sales to Increase

Japan’s mobile-phone shipments are forecast to rise this year, after gaining for the first time in three quarters in the period ended December, researcher IDC said. For all of 2005, shipments rose 0.5 percent to 44.32 million units. Sales of 3G handsets in the fourth quarter helped offset declines in the previous two quarters, fourth-quarter mobile-phone shipments rose 7.1 percent to 11.6 million units from a year earlier, IDC said.

eMobile Chooses Ericsson Network

eMobile, a new entrant to the Japanese 3G market, has selected Ericsson as the prime supplier of its new W-CDMA/HSDPA network. The agreement involves W-CDMA 1.7GHz radio networks in the most
populated areas of Japan, such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, and a complete nationwide core network, including Ericsson’s service-aware packet core and mobile softswitch solution. Fast roll-out will enable eMobile, a subsidiary company of eAccess, to launch commercial services in March 2007.

Suica Mashup Mapping

Sherelog is a system that fetches data from JR’s Suica RFID train pass and visualizes personal train-ride records on a large public map (or Google Map). Koutaro Hashimoto, Yasuhiro Suzuki, Toshio Iwai, Michitaka Hirose showed this system at the Japan Media Arts Festival earlier this month. The developers’ intentions seem to be (1) to support people to remember their personal travel histories and reflect upon them and (2) to create unique opportunities for communications by making it extremely easy to share personal travel histories.

Custom Disney Bluetooth Music Kit

Japan-based MobileCast has introduced a bluetooth controller and custom face-plate package [.jpg] for DoCoMo’s new P902i 3G handsets made by Panasonic. The “mLink” kit is available, for an estimated market price of about 14,800 yen, in 3 different Disney character designs; Mickey mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Alice in Wonderland and enables remote control operations with the cellphones music player including play, skip, pause and volume adjustment at a working distance of about 10 meters.

Guinness Book of Records for i-mode?

According to reports from local media, DoCoMo have applied to the Guinness Book of Records for its i-mode service as a result of the 70 million emails sent in one hour on New Year’s eve 2006. It is said that there has been no other instance when a single mobile Internet service provider has sent and received 70 million mails in one hour.