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Vodafone's New Shibuya Megastore

Vodafone's New Shibuya MegastoreOn April 1, Vodafone Japan opened its 5-floor, 890-square-meter flagship megastore in Shibuya and we were there to cover the event and take a peak at some of the goodies on hand. Japan Wireless Watchers will know that Shibuya makes or breaks fashions for Japan’s youth market, and i-mode is commonly said to have been popularized in Shibuya. For Vodafone, the new store is part of a public relations blitz to complete the rebranding of J-Phone amongst Japan’s vital teens and tweens market ahead of a big 3G terminal push later in the year. We were a bit disappointed that Vodafone didn’t have anything really new on offer in terms of new services or handsets to coincide with the big opening, but as a rebranding tool the store — located centrally on one of Shibuya’s main drags — is probably worth a thousand billboards. Full Program Run-time 6:04

DoCoMo W-CDMA FOMA Adds 0.72 Million

FOMA is finally flying for NTT DoCoMo, with the 900i series proving a huge hit. Last week DoCoMo announced that its 3G subsriber base had topped three million and the figures in from Japan’s Telecommunication Carriers Association show that for the first time in over half a year DoCoMo is punching toe-to-toe with KDDI for new subscribers. In fact, it was a very close call; for March 2004 DoCoMo raked in 723,800 new 3G adds against Au Group’s 742,800. The point: The 900is are living up to the hype.

Vodafone Unveils First TV/ Radio Mobile Phone

Vodafone strikes back! Those of you who have read this week’s Viewpoint will know that Toshiba is running silent and deep on its digital TV tuner mobile phones…but meantime they’ve come up with Japan’s first TV/ Radio phone for…Vodafone! Wow! The V401T beats NEC’s groundbreaking V601N, Japan’s first TV mobile phone, in several important areas. First; the 2.2 inch screen is upgraded to QVGA; second, the V401T is also capable of 12 minutes of program recording time; and third of course, there is the radio…They’ve actually gone and done it. Cool!!!… And now the caveats…

Shazam – Name that Ringtone

SystemK announced April 1 that a filed test of Shazam, a music recognition service developed by Shazam Entertainment of London, ended in great success. By simply pointing a cellphone toward any music for 30 seconds, the user can find out the name and the singer of the tune.

E-Learning on the Move

“The only device that’s really handy enough to let you study where, and when, you want is the cellular phone,” says Junko Ogawa, mobile-Internet content producer for Tokyo language-textbook publishing company, ALC Press. Streamlined study, testing and reference sites are used by everyone, from the salaryman hoping to cram in a little English vocabulary during his morning commute, to the high school student with five minutes to spare for brushing up on a few Chinese kanji characters.

Mobile TV Solution Coming?

On top of launching full-scale digital-satellite-to-mobile-terminal broadcasting services on July 1, Mobile Broadcasting Corp. (MBCO) and its main technology backer Toshiba Corp. are making a strong, and they believe attractive, push to generate digital broadcasting revenue streams for Japan’s wireless carriers in April 2006 when DoCoMo, KDDI, and perhaps Vodafone K.K. will unleash mobiles with digital TV tuners on them. Talking to Shigekazu Hori, vice president and general manger of Toshiba Corp.’s Network Services & Contents Control Center last week, the planets could finally be aligning for a tailor-made revenue model that will finally convince Japan’s carriers to equip mobile phones with television. And, of course, as mentioned by DoCoMo’s Keiji Tachikawa last week, the fact that MPEG-4 standards have been settled and H.264 is coming doesn’t hurt either.

Embedded Linux for New Archos PDA

Archos will ship at the end of 2004 a portable audio/video device rumored to be based on embedded Linux. Cebit attendees report that the as-yet unnamed device was spotted running Qtopia, a PDA app stack from Trolltech currently available only for embedded Linux. The device will support networking through Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, modem and GSM add-on cards.

DoCoMo's New 3G Service Model

DoCoMo's New 3G Service ModelOn March 24, NTT DoCoMo president Keiji Tachikawa held his routine monthly press briefing and, with what is becoming a regular feature of his recent speeches, pounded the drum once more about the “Paradigm Shift” DoCoMo plans for its services from fiscal 2004 onwards. In a nutshell, this means introducing flat rates for packet data on June 1st, but, “We did not want to open up the window to all customers from day one,” he told reporters. Aided by a flashy Powerpoint presentation, Dr. Tachikawa also announced new anti-spam and anti-virus measures that will be implemented over the next few months. Full Program Run-time 20:25

5G Mobile Phones Coming Soon

An Info-Tech survey released to selected CEOs this week shows that wireless customers want free calls, free phones, the ability to switch between carriers for free, with international roaming and handsets that don’t need recharging every day. Carriers expressed shock and awe at the results and promised to sell off their swank marble skyscrapers, many situated in the heart of Tokyo’s financial district, to facilitate the move. “We are asking shareholders to help us deal with these issues,” said an obviously unsettled CEO at a hastily convened press conference. “While we have managed to get 5G deployment ready for the end of this year, that doesn’t seem to be what our customers really want,” the flustered president told WWJ in an exclusive interview today.

NEC to Develop Wireless IP Phones Based on Windows CE Running Intel Hardware

NEC Infrontia Corp. has announced plans to develop wireless IP phones based on Microsoft Windows CE operating system. The plan was announced today, in accordance with the technical cooperation of Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corporation, at the Spring 2004 Voice on the Net (VON) Trade Show & Expo in Santa Clara, California. NEC Infrontia’s wireless IP phones will run Windows CE, Microsoft’s advanced real-time operating system, and leverage a new innovative hardware platform from Intel.