<span class="vcard">editors</span>
editors

Dell Making MVNO Move in Japan?

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!

Engagement Marketing with QR Codes & 1Seg

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.

MobiActions Gaming For Toshiba

The good folks at Mobiactions are in the news again with another exciting mobile interactive game campaign to promote Toshiba’s new Note PC’s in Japan. The Toshiba branded game uses the latest Mobiactions with Veeplayer mobile interactive video and voice response (IVVR) technology so users can dial in and immediately play a fun game that allows them to score points and win prizes.

Kddi Introduces HTC Smartphone

Kddi Introduces HTC SmartphoneAU has announced their E30HT handset, running Windows mobile 6.1 pro edition, will be available as of May. Also of note, the EVDO Rev.1 network connection speed package is topped up with a full flat-rate data plan so that heavy users will be entitled to connect the device as a so-called walking hotspot for their laptops as well.

Congrats to the folks at scanR – who presented at MoMo Tokyo earlier this week – as their application comes loaded as a pre-install, other goodies include; Adobe Reader, Opera Mobile, Navitime, Microsoft Office and Outlook with ActiveSync. Thankfully the CDMA Global Passport package is also available for clients when roaming overseas. HTC finally has handsets on all three operators!

Fujitsu HIts 120Mbps Field Testing LTE

Fujitsu Laboratories has announced that they have conducted successful field testing for LTE using 4×4 MIMO. The trials, in collaboration with DoCoMo, took place in Hokkaido and resulted in wireless data transmissions in the range of 120 Mbps (using 10 MHz bandwidth) in Sapporo’s urban environment. This would be equivalent to 240 Mbps throughput using the 20 MHz maximum bandwidth that LTE allows.