Opera Software today announced it will deliver Opera’s port for the BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) application development platform with KDDI, Japan’s second largest mobile operator. “Opera’s full Internet browser offers the greatest advantage with the high-speed and efficient data communication capabilities of the 3G CDMA network,” says Dr. Seiichiro Sakai, Director, Product Management Department, Service & Product Planning Division.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Motorola Inc. and Motorola Japan Ltd. announced today that they have signed an agreement to jointly develop a FOMA handset targeting business users by taking advantage of high-speed 3G FOMA technologies. Commercialization is scheduled for spring 2005. The new handset, which is compatible with GSM/GPRS technologies, will be the first FOMA model that may be used outside of Japan. Unlike i-mode®-capable phones, the handset will enable access to the internet through mopera® or any other available internet connection service. What’s more, its browser will be able to display standard web pages. Full Press Release Here.
NEC Corporation today announced that NEC Telecommunications (China), a new company and a business entity established in May 2004 to actively pursue mobile solution business in China, introduced a new branding strategy “Get Personal” (Chinese-English translation) to further expand its mobile business in China. Along with the campaign, NEC reveals its new strategy to enter into the mid-low range product market segment to appeal to a wider range of consumers in China. The three N10X series of products with seven color variations, which are also being announced today, are one of the key products for the new strategy.
The sale of DoCoMo’s F900iC, the only FeliCa-enabled FOMA (3G) terminal, started in Japan the first week of August. Herewith, we present a rough translation of a useful chart showing price breakdowns for all F900i-series handsets now available. We’re (more than a little bit) surprised at how much the upgrade charge (to get the latest model) varies by region. At one electronic retail chain, the new contract price on an F900iC in Tokyo is 33,375 yen; in Osaka, 15,700 yen.
MediaSeek announced that it has successfully developed an optical character reader (OCR) engine designed to be used in camera phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. The BREW OCR extension extracts and analyzes text image captured with the built-in camera, enabling users to display actual text data on a mobile device’s screen.
Softbank Corp and eAccess Ltd plan to step up their testing of next-generation cell-phone systems by this fall to collect more data. The companies are working toward launching TDD (time division duplex) cell-phone services, which are suitable for high-speed data communications. Accumulating sufficient test data is deemed key to securing a slot when the Ministry of Telecommunications allocates frequencies for TDD services as early as 2005.
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo will offer a new 3G handset made by Motorola in spring 2005. DoCoMo is also (apparently) planning to supply terminals coming from Nokia as well. The article notes that forcast increasing global demand and product improvements by major overseas manufacturers, indicates a competative creep on the traditional domestic handset makers.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries announced that they will add English language capability to the i-mode® Disaster Message Board service beginning September 1, 2004. DoCoMo set up this electronic bulletin board service in Japanese last January, to be activated in the event of a major calamity such as a high-magnitude earthquake. The bulletin board will enable i-mode subscribers within the disaster area to post messages in order to notify family and friends of their personal safety and whereabouts. The service was launched in order to ensure communication and prevent a degradation in network performance, since an overflow of voice calls and data packet transmissions would likely follow a major disaster.
The Mobidec 2004 annual event is back for their 4th year, slated to run Aug. 26 – 27th in Tokyo’s Aoyama Diamond Hall. Discover the future for fusion of cybermoney, music distribution, rich contents, and broadcast. As the cellular phone and mobile web usage are increasingly expanding, this two day seminar will explore the affects of the wireless domain on the real economy. The key players in Japan’s cellular phone business and technology sectors will make presentations, and display company exhibits, of their unique experiance in this field.
Panasonic announced the release of it’s SDK MediaArtist, an MPEG-4 related AV software encoder for the 3GPP/3GPP2 and SD-Video standards, will go on sale Sept. 1st. Designed to operate with the SD memory card in target devices such as a cellphones, car navi systems, television, and camera models which are increasingly being adopted. Configured for the 3G phones of Japan’s wireless carriers and using the 3GPP standard, the original MPEG-4 object model has been significantly extended. Press Release in Japanese.
