Oki Electric and NTT Communications announced that they have developed a new automated teller machine (ATM) that can exchange data with infrared port-equipped mobile devices including cellphones. The new ATM enables account holders to withdraw cash and check the balance using a mobile phone [.jpg image] just as if they do with a cash card.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that after late May it will offer the new KOTO -V303T- model by Toshiba with a look that fuses elements of traditional Japanese and modern designs. The KOTO is a design model that combines traditional Japanese and modern elements based on the concept of universal beauty in the present. In addition to incorporating elements of the koto form, the dial keys have been delicately constructed like koto strings.
Reporting net income up nearly 400% year-over-year, Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm said “Our financial results reflect the strong acceptance and rapid global growth of 3G CDMA”. Early 3G CDMA entrants continue to perform well, KDDI, the first CDMA operator in Japan, announced its sixth consecutive month as the leading Japanese operator in net subscriber additions, and now has approximately 14 million subscribers on its 3G network.
Wireless Watchers will have noted that it’s changing-of-the-guard season in Japan, with NTT DoCoMo’s Keiji Tachikawa about to move on just as the company enters a self-described “paradigm shift.” We believe we know what his successor, Executive Vice President Shiro Tsuda, will be up to — mainly because DoCoMo strives at every opportunity these days to tell one and allit’s not a carrier any more, but rather a budding e-commerce service platform provider. More intriguing, however, are the senior staff developments at Vodafone’s struggling Japan opco, Vodafone KK (struggling, that is, through a device dry spell that won’t see any significant new 3G models out until the fall). Big V has just shipped over a new COO, David Jones, who has arrived, we guess, with a briefcase full of spring-cleaning items. Certainly the appointment of a new chief operating officer hints at a change of gear for the company. Is this a push to boost the lagging 3G provider from neutral to at least first gear?
KDDI has set a new usage fee of 95 yen per usage for EZNaviwalk, a GPS based location idenfication service for pedestrians. EZNaviwalk’s monthly service fees are 315 yen or less, and beginning the end of this April, the service will be available for one time users for 95 yen for a period of 24 hours. EZNaviwalk “navigates” users to destinations by showing on their handset screens their current location and their ultimate destinations which could be shops and restaurants.
Highly sophisticated cellular phones are also starting to care for their owners by warning them of their health problems or by keeping them safe in case of emergency. LG hooked up with Healthpia, the health-related venture start-up to churn out diabetes phones within a couple of months for the first time in the world. The new-concept phone is equipped with a microchip, which can measure the human body’s glucose, a sugar that comes from food, thus keeping the handset owners informed of their status.
NTT announced it will launch an official “uefa.com” site for i-mode mobile with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The service is set to begin on April 19, 2004. They will provide the latest highlights from the official Japanese UEFA site “jp.uefa.com,” including updates from games such as the UEFA Champions League and UEFA EURO 2004. Other features will include interviews with popular players, information about individual players and their teams, and a variety of screensavers.
“Always in motion, the future is,” says Master Yoda – and your faithful Jedi knights at WWJ just got a lesson on what’s coming out for mobile phones here this summer. Conventional H.264 video compression requires a large volume of arithmetic operations, and additional components such as H.264-dedicated LSI application processors (essentially a high-speed digital signal processing chip). However, when a H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec meets a super algorithm that boosts on-chip processing, the result is super-clear video with less demand on battery power. “Algorithm Specialist” Techno Mathematical Co., Ltd., has just released its Digital Media New Algorithm (DMNA) and today’s program takes a look at the results. Full Program Run-time 13:10
According to Huawei spokesman Fu Jun, Huawei has already begun producing handsets for use with mobile systems that use the CDMA-1X standard backed by US-based Qualcomm Corp. Fu said Huawei is also developing handsets for W-CDMA, which is the European standard Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa Ltd is using in its 3G service now on offer in Britain and Italy. He added new 3G handsets are being designed in various partnerships with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co’s Panasonic, NEC Corp and Infineon Technologies AG. The company made headlines in December when it signed agreements with Emirates Telecommunications Corp and Hong Kong’s Sunday on the deployment of W-CDMA networks for the two telecom operators.
A new video encoding method nicknamed the “mammoth Codec” is attracting the attention of engineers in a wide range of equipment development sectors. The primary reason is the high data compression ratio, significantly better than that offered by existing Phase 2 (MPEG-2) or MPEG-4 Visual schemes. Many authorities working on international standards for encoding technology feel that little further improvement can be expected in the compression ratio, making the new technique a trump card that closes out the current series of MPEG-based Codecs, which began with MPEG-1.
