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OMRON to Ship EPCglobally Compliant RFID Products

Omron Corporation, a global leader in automation, sensing and control technologies, announced today it will ship an IC tag inlay compliant with Class 1 Generation 2 (C1G2) of EPCglobal specifications. Sample shipments, the first from any Japanese manufacturer, will start in October to suppliers of major retailers, label converters and others. Mass production is scheduled to begin in February 2006*. The sample shipped IC tag inlay conforms to the UHF band 902-928 MHz used in the U.S., and is also compliant with EPCglobal Class1 Generation 2 (C1G2), as defined by EPCglobal, the international standardization organization.

Japan and China Sign Mobile MOU

The governments of China and Japan plan long-term co-operation for the development and standardization of future mobile communications technologies. Ministries of the Chinese and Japanese governments have signed a memorandum of understanding that will see the two countries collaborate on the development and standardization of advanced mobile communications. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) and Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) will co-operate on what they call fourth-generation, or “beyond the third generation” (B3G) technologies.

Jupiter Japan to Become MVNO

Shares of Jupiter Telecommunications Co. rose as much as 2.9 percent after a report that Japan’s biggest cable television provider may begin its own cellular phone service using Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese network. Jupiter’s stock rose 1.5 percent to 94,900 yen as of 9:58 a.m. in trading on the Jasdaq. The company may sign up with Vodafone K.K., the local unit of Newbury, England-based Vodafone, next year, said Jupiter President Tomoyuki Moriizumi in an interview with the the Yomiuri newspaper. Officials at Tokyo-based Jupiter were not available to comment on the report.

Official Nintendo Mobile Service

A recent report from the Nikkei reveals that Nintendo has licensed its properties for use as mobile phone content. According to this official Nintendo site [ in Japanese ], the service will be named Nintendo Mobile, and will begin on Japanese service provider NTT DoCoMo on October 17th, KDDI(au) on October 20th, and Vodafone on November 1st.

Cellcom to Launch i-mode in Israel

DoCoMo has just announced that Cellcom Israel, Ltd. will start marketing DoCoMo’s i-mode service in the Israeli market as of today. The service, which will be offered over Cellcom’s GPRS network, is the eleventh market for i-mode, following Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Australia. DoCoMo sees great potential for i-mode growth in Israel, with its national population of approximately 7 million people.

Toshiba to Resume 2G Sales in EU

Toshiba Corp. is to reintroduce 2G mobile phones in the European market in October to benefit from strong local demand for such handsets, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing company sources. Toshiba has been overhauling its overseas cell phone business as part of efforts to reduce losses from the handset division. In fiscal 2004, the company withdrew from the 2G handset business in North America and China because of poor local sales.

Telstra Does 3G Soft Launch

Telstra will today become only the second telco in Australia to offer 3G mobile services, but the low-key launch reflects the changed expectations since Hutchison Telecom made a glitzy debut in 2003. Telstra’s i-mode service – which has been available for six months on the GSM network – is already offering 211 sites, although not all of them will be available on the 3G service straight away. “The sheer variety and depth of services available gives Telstra a big head start from other operators that have a more limited scope of services,” said tech research firm Ovum.

DoCoMo Props Up Symbian

An extensive article in Wireless Week makes it clear that Motorola is only developing some Symbian handsets at the request of carrier partners “such as NTT DoCoMo”, which have invested in Motorola to keep the Symbian development going. Motorola’s primary OS emphasis is on its Linux/Java platform and Microsoft’s OS, neither of which is as expensive in royalties or implementation costs as Symbian, says Greg Besio, Motorola’s corporate vice president of mobile devices software.

Vodafone's Mobile Music Search

Vodafone K.K. announced that on 1 September 2005 it launched a new Music Search service on its mobile internet service Vodafone live!, so customers can find Chaku-Uta, Chaku-Uta Long Version, and Chaku-Uta Full music tracks faster and with greater ease. For the price of communication charges alone, the Music Search service lets customers search Chaku-Uta and Chaku-Uta Full music track content by artist name. After inputting the artist’s name (even partially) in either kanji, hiragana, alphabet letters or numbers, Vodafone live! official artist song content is searched according to a given keyword and links to artist information pages are displayed.

DoCoMo Announces New Concept Phone

NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson have introduced a new concept model called the RADIDEN, claiming the world’s first cell phone that has been equipped with a three-band AM/FM/TV tuner. The handset incorporates a dual-front design: one side can be used as a cell phone, and on the other side is a radio designed for the 2G MOVA network. The radio features easy-to-select channels, a dedicated single-color sub-display (16.7×23.1mm), as well as visible buttons allowing the user to use i-mode while listening to the radio.