The final figures published by CIAJ for the Japanese telecom sector in the last full fiscal year (April 2007 through March 2008) show Wireless network equipment posted sales of 236.8 million yen, a positive growth of 11.3% over the previous year. However, mobile terminal equipment earned 1.662 trillion yen down 4.2% YoY, of which cellular phones accounted for 1.546 trillion yen or negative growth of 5.3% over the previous year. Full details Here.
Verena over at PingMag filed a great report, from her visit to the recent RFID expo held in Tokyo, with an overview of several embedded tag designs including the school uniform emblem pictured below. As we noted previously (Here and Here), the trials with students – and prisoners – continues to be a hot topic especially considering the more recent noise about youngsters mobile phone usage.
Seron over at What Japan Thinks posted this translated version of a survey conducted by Goo Research looking into the domestic demand of users considering a handset upgrade this summer. While the results show that perhaps 7% seem likely to buy a new model, one rather interesting result found there is the strong demand for 1Seg digital tv as a required function. Another, albeit less surprising but certainly meaningful, question relating to services confirmed that over 40% consider an unlimited data plan to be important. A few other recent notes of interest about mobile tv coming up after the jump.
Panasonic Mobile Communications and NTT DATA Corp. announced they have reached a basic agreement on a capital and business alliance on Panasonic Mobile & System Engineering (“PMSE”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Panasonic Mobile. NTT DATA will take over 60 percent of the shares issued by PMSE and establish the new, yet to be named, company in Yokohama by October 2008.
In a landmark announcement yesterday, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo expressed their intent to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform. Membership of this non-profit Foundation will be open to all organizations. This initiative is supported by current shareholders and management of Symbian Limited, who have been actively involved in its development.
Nokia announced plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own and then contribute the Symbian and S60 software to the Foundation. Sony Ericsson and Motorola today announced their intention to contribute technology from UIQ and DOCOMO has also indicated its willingness to contribute its MOAP(S) assets. From these contributions, the Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.
As the hype anticipation builds, Softbank Mobile has released the the applicable subscription plan details for Apple’s 3G iPhone. According to this announcement, purchase of iPhone 3G 8GB model will run approximately 23,000jpy, or 960jpy month over 2-year term and unlimited data packet usage is priced at 5,985jpy per month. The package provided will be their popular ‘White Plan’ offering free domestic voice calls between SoftBank handsets from 1:00 to 21:00 and a SoftBank original mail service with receipt notification ‘Email’ for free.
