Kyocera Communications, a sales, marketing and service organization for Kyocera and Sanyo-branded products in the Americas, presented their technology portfolio of four broadband wireless devices at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas. Along with its full line of mobile phones, the company showed a prototype all-in-one LTE base station along with three iBurst terminal devices in its booth at this years event.
A new Sharp handset is headed stateside for T-Mobile as this post shows the Sharp Sidekick PV300 has shown up with the FCC. While it’s possible they are running the device through the FCC to get global roaming certification, however the certification for AWS 3G leads one believe it is destined for T-Mobile as AWS 3G is the kind T-Mobile uses.
The good folks over at KDDI have announced [in Japanese] a new lineup of devices, tagged “iida” for innovation, imagination, design and art, with 3-models on launch to follow in the foot steps of their in-house AU Design Project. The G9 slider, Misora clamshell and stylish collaboration with Yayoi Kusama, details are available Here, along with teasers for more units to come.
We note the Solar-powered concept model on display during CEATEC 2008 seems to be in the pipeline and the Pico Projector which can also connect to several other AU handsets as well. All of these devices are on display now over at the Designing Studio in Harajuku!
DoCoMo announced that it has established its fifth U.S. Advisory Board and will convene the first meeting in the United States on April 8. The board will be chaired by former FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, currently chairman of the MK Powell Group and a senior advisor to Providence Equity Capital, who also chaired the previous board. He will be joined by 2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz, currently a professor at Columbia University.
Mark over at TechRadar has a post on recent rumblings by Dell in the UMPC space. We have seen the increasing push to sell flat-rate data subscriptions – primed by ‘free’ mini laptop hooked to two-year contract – over the last six months (from all operators offering several OEM models) but this is the first whiff of an MVNO play. According to the article, machine will go on sale here this summer with internal HSDPA cards which allow max. downlink speeds of 7.2Mbps for an estimated $500. While there is no indication of on-going access fees, the current typical all you can surf account runs about $40 per month. Now that would be interesting!
Lux is running a very cool campaign in Shibuya this week utlizing 1Seg digital TV broadcasting with huge QR Codes on ad posters. They have setup a temporary display, outside ‘the’ fashion central 109 building, which calls for users to scan the code in order to get instructions on how they can tune-in (spotcasting on channel 34) for more details. The content awaiting them includes a mobile micro-site with a promotional tv commercial, featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones, along with a slick call-to-action for trendy girls to audition for a future campaign.
