Aeroflex Inc. announced that Masahiro Okabe has been appointed as the sales manager for Japan. According to the press release, Okabe comes to Aeroflex with nearly 17 years experience in the test and measurement products industry. His experience encompasses engineering, business leadership, sales, and channel partner management. He holds an Electric Communication Engineering degree from Tokyo Denki University.
Toshiba Corp. has developed software that lets shoppers use their phones to check the reputations of products on the Internet. Shoppers only need to use the phone’s built-in digital camera to take a photo of the product bar-code label. The service will cover products that consumers are particularly concerned about, including consumer electronics products, food, books, CDs, DVDs and cosmetics. Commercial application is expected to begin in fiscal 2006 after further testing at electric appliance retailers and bookstores from February.
O2 is set to announce it has signed up auction giant eBay to its i-mode mobile internet service. The service, which can already be accessed via i-mode enabled handsets, is thought to be receiving its official launch soon. The i-mode version of eBay provides most of the same functionality as the regular internet service, including the ability to bid, search the auction site and monitor the progress of auctions using the ‘my eBay’ function. eBay has already made its appearance on i-mode in a handful of geographies including Australia, France and Singapore.
In the 1997 movie Titanic, Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer, states: “From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder… It is a mathematical certainty.” In the same light, it’s interesting to note today’s news from NTT DoCoMo, stating the carrier surpassed 20 million 3G FOMA subscribers on 29 December 2005. If we assume the same rate of growth this month, and compare to KDDI’s presumed rate of growth in December and January, we can make a pretty good guess as to when Big D will grab 3G lead. More importantly, what does this mean for the market?
(Excerpt from full article) We can also expect January to be a good month for phone sales — for all carriers — due to a rather significant practice in Japanese culture: o-toshidama. This is the practice of giving gifts of money to children and teens. The money is usually given in little decorative envelopes, and according to 1999 data from the Kumon Children’s Research Institute, an average child received around 40,000 yen (I guess it’s more now). Most significantly: “Most save the money, [but] others spend it on relatively expensive computer games, clothes, and CDs.” And phones, we suspect.
Gracenote and Muze today announced a multi-year partnership to offer the industry’s most comprehensive and accurate global media identification and rich content solution for consumer electronics and mobile phone devices, as well as PC applications. Offering a comprehensive collection of content for entertainment products currently available in North America, Europe and other parts of the world, Muze provides album art, album reviews and artist biographies for the industry’s most influential and popular artists of all time. Integrating Muze’s award-winning editorial content with Gracenote’s industry-leading music identification technology, services and global information database will allow digital entertainment companies to easily offer their customers an enhanced media experience anywhere they ship products in the world.
NTT DoCoMo just announced that the number of subscribers to their 3G FOMA service surpassed the 20 million mark on December 29, 2005, a little over four years since the service’s launch on October 1, 2001. DoCoMo attributes the rapid subscriber growth to its expanding range of 3G handsets, including new 902i FOMA models equipped for PushTalk walkie-talkie-style communication, ToruCa information download services and i-channel automatic telop-style information updates. The company expects FOMA subscriptions to reach 23.5 million by the end of March 2006.
