Several more of Docomo’s latest 3G models, as announced in January, are rolling-out here this weekend. While the N703i by NEC was available last week, the Panasonic, Mitsubishi and waterproof! Fujitsu 703i’s hit the store shelves on Feb. 2nd. We have noticed an unusually aggressive amount of advertising – both outdoor and on TV – for these new models, so the TCA results in early March should be rather interesting.
WiMAX Day, a newsletter published by the WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance, reported the ITU Working Party 8F met in Cameroon at the end of January to look at IMT-2000 and systems beyond IMT-2000. Such a move would bring considerable benefits by allowing WiMAX to operate in globally allocated frequency bands, enable global roaming and reduce equipment costs.
NTT DoCoMo today announced their Q3 results (1 October – 31 December) for fiscal 2006 with year-ending March 31st 2007. Reported sales rose 0.4% with operating profit up 18% during the period, however net income fell to 93.9 bln JPY compared with 131.1 bln JPY in Q3 of fiscal 2005. The 28% year-on-year decline was caused by the one-time profit (40 bln JPY) booked from the operators sale of its stake in KPN Mobile in Q3 last year.
Toshiba Corp. said on Wednesday it will match rival Samsung Electronics March launch of the industry’s first 2-Gigabyte NAND flash chip by mass-producing a chip with as much storage a month later. Toshiba, which aims to take a combined 40 percent market share with partner SanDisk Corp. by 2008, will begin by shipping samples of its 2-Gigabyte chips in March, using 56-nanometre process technology, and plans monthly shipments of 300,000 chips from April.
NEPRO JAPAN recently published the results of a survey into economising on one’s mobile phone bill. On one day in mid-December of last year they questioned 3,425 people across the three main Japanese carriers, DoCoMo’s iMode, Softbank’s Yahoo! Keitai and au and TU-KA’s EZweb, by means of a public poll available through the main menus of all three carriers’ systems. 44% of the sample were male; 3% were teenagers, 35% in their twenties, 44% in their thirties, and 18% aged forty and over. Similar questions were asked of a similar group around the same time last year, so one can perhaps observe a trend over the past year. Full details with graphs Here.
Japan is unique in that consumer studies show that females use the mobile internet more than their male counterparts and you can see evidence of this in the large number of content sites aimed mainly at women. Beauty Walker and howzy !BEAUTY are examples I’ve posted in the past. Add recently announced Nail Club [.pdf], a nail art simulator for the mobile, to that list. You start with a blank canvas (an unpolished nail) and create your own design using 72 colours, 300 types of airbrush, 200 holograms, 100 3D decorations and 300 gems.
