NEC Electronics and Renesas have entered talks to strike a merger deal to create a new entity which would become the largest semiconductor company in Japan, and number three globally behind Intel and Samsung with leading market share in micro-controllers and system-on-chip products for cars and mobile devices, capable of generating roughly $13 billion in combined yearly sales.
We’re finally back, and fully recovered, from the the annual CTIA Wireless event held last month in Las Vegas. As you might imagine living large on the strip for almost a whole week took a certain degree of – ahem – stamina, but we did manage to spend some valuable time the show floor, had several meetings in the VIP lounge, some interviews in the media room and a few ‘interesting’ connections in Caesars Palace.
While it’s only be fair to expect, considering the current economic times, that YoY attendance would be down as was the case during Mobile World Congress in February. That being said, the trade exhibitors – and delegates in general – seemed plenty up-beat with both Samsung and LG front and center in full force with along with all the usual suspects taking hefty square footage at LVCC. Of course there were a few Japanese players represented with DoCoMo, Fujitsu and Kyocera, who had an entire section of Sanyo handsets, both taking space to demo their products and services.
According to this report filed from the recent WiMAX Forum Congress Asia event in Singapore, Takeshi Tanaka – president of UQ Communications – is quoted; “People are beginning to think that cellular internet is fake.. the browser is limited, the content and performance are limited, and so are the screen sizes. This is our opportunity to differentiate from the 3G style”. So, the gloves are off!
Nico Nico Douga, the popular Japanese video sharing site known it’s original interface where users can add comments on video in realtime, has finally released their iPhone app – for free! – according to this article on cNet Japan. The design was based on the companies mobile edition, which was done on Java, launched in 2007, however, Iphone apps need to be coded in C and this apparently caused some real challenges for coding the delivery of certain functions such as commenting.
DoCoMo has just released it’s unaudited results [.PDF Here] for the full 2008 fiscal year, which closed on 31 March. While operating revenues were down 5.6% YoY – with operating expenses trimmed by 7.3% – the bottom line net income was off 3.9% compared to 2007. The company has also announced a series of new initiatives, in several fields of interest, more details after the jump.
The Transport and Communications Minister of Peru, Enrique Cornejo, has announced the country will officially adopt ISDB-T, the Japanese terrestrial digital TV system of technology. Cornejo made the announcement after a meeting between the head of State, Alan García, and the Prime Minister of Japan envoy, Shunichi Yamaguchi, at the Government Palace. Japan will carry out several programs to assist in the implementation of digital television in Peru, such as human resource training and economic cooperation.
The always-on Jean Snow posted an interesting tip on a groovy style QR Code campaign running for Louis Vuitton. Produced by SET, and designed by Takashi Murakami, this is definitely a level-up from the good old black & white standard. While we have covered several unusual 2D barcode offerings in the past, such as Design QR and Ishinokoe, this next-gen full color version certainly raises the bar.
We knew they would do it finally eventually. GMAP, with Enfour, have launched a fantastic bi-lingual Tokyo map application on the iTunes App Store. Find!TOKYO is perhaps ‘the’ most comprehensive location tool available for the metropolis, featuring thousands of custom designed maps for the iPhone and iPod touch screen.
The application includes fully scalable Tokyo train/subway map, interior maps of major stations, area maps and a detailed directory with maps of hotels, cinemas, parks, temples, shrines, etc. Along with the maps, many locations are tagged with photos and relevant information for use as visual guides or to learn about the locations. The content is stored inside the application so there is no need to access the Internet; ideal for the iTouch and overeas iPhone users.
There is a 600 yen one-time fee for Find!TOKYO, which includes future version updates, so you’ll never get lost in Tokyo again.. a killer deal at twice the price!
KDDI and Sharp have announced the world first debut of a waterproof solar panel powered handset will be available for sale in Japan as of early June. The eco-friendly design will enable an estimated 1 minute of voice usage for every 10 minutes of charging time, under ideal conditions, and appears set to be the first of several innovative models planned for future release. The code-named Voyage, Soup and Gem concept designs are featured Here.
Hitachi has announced the beta release of GazoPa, an iPhone app which allows users to search for similar images on the web by uploading any photo captured with camera on iPhone, will be available free at Apple’s iPhone App Store. This makes it possible for users to search for images similar to the items in front of them since GazoPa uses image features such as color and/or shape, users can look for images without typing any words.
