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

DoCoMo Comments on Cingular Acquisition

WWJ has …so far…refrained from the comment on the AT&T Wireless dealdizmo, the value of which seems to have crept about a billion a day, up to $35b over the last week, according to media speculation. Mmm. The Japanese press has pronounced that DoCoMo has confirmed that it wasnot bidding (and had no intention of getting involved in) any deal about who, what and when was going to suck up the losses and deal with the huge potential with AT&T Wireless Services. Well, we say, ?Quel surprise!” For us, the whole episode was the non-story of the month as regards DoCoMo, because there was no way Keiji Tachikawa was going to put ANY money on the line to prop up AT&T; after the losses DoCoMo got saddled with when its last foreign mobile lebensraum went south. So now AT&T has been Cingulared, it’s time for DoCoMo to cash in its chips.

Vodafone KK: J-Phone Not Lost in Translation?

Those watching this week’s video program will get to see what a howler Bow-Lingual is on Vodafone’s new V610SH handset from Sharp. We are just itching to find out if the same inventive and creative genius that seemed to permeate the old J-Phone can re-establish itself in 2004 at Vodafone KK. A recent study shows that, as we suspected, the Japanese public is going gangbusters for TV mobile phones. Having developed Japan’s first TV celly, the former J-Phone Corps have proven, yet again, they were ahead of the curve in understanding what customers want. But it is also apparent that Vodafone KK will need more than highly entertaining doggy gimmicks if it is to stop losing market share to KDDI and DoCoMo’s 3G services.

Bow-Lingual – A Cell Phone for Fido

Bow-Lingual - A Cell Phone for FidoWe jumped at the chance to take the new Bow-Lingual Connect software for wireless ‘walkies’ recently. Takara, makers of the popular canine speech translator, had a dog to lend us, but it fell ill. Then a friendly ballerina’s French Bulldog pulled out at the last minute, so we conducted this highly unscientific test on Vodafone’s V601SH handset by Sharp using our own pre-recorded (with Movie Sha-Mail) video of a since-deceased beagle. We may have been barking up the wrong tree with this approach, or howling mad to try to make sense of Bow-Lingual, but even if Takara’s mobile version is a bit beastly, it shouldn’t distract from the unit itself, which is a jolly good cell phone. Full Program Run-time 11:38

Cell Phone Users Want TV Function

Nepro Japan published results of a survey of mobile phone users about services and functions. According to the survey, the most wanted function is a TV, as about 40% of the respondents pointed to it. In response to a question regarding “functions desirable for future mobile phones” (multiple answers allowed), “TV” (43%), “dictionaries” (35%) and “keys” (29%) were the top three. Functions such as “electronic wallet” (25%) and “TV phone” (24%) did not attract many supporters.

Panasonic Ships CCD-Killing Tech for Mobiles

With what might turn out to be impeccable timing, Matsushita Electric Industrial is shipping what Panasonic is touting as a breakthrough technology called nuMAICOVICON to replace CCD and conventional CMOS for camera loaded mobile phones. Imagine a technology that’s as cheap and cheerful on power consumption as CMOS, but delivers CCD quality, add in a good chuck of production and the Panasonic people could have a product that will save quite a few purchasing managers’ careers. This isn’t a future technology story: Panasonic are deadly serious. They have already started banging out about 2.2 million of the 1.3 megapixel version now, are adding a 2 megapixel version next month and want to ramp to 8 million units a month by October! WOW!

Siemens, Huawei Sign 3G Joint Venture

Shenzhen Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., one of China’s leading telecom equipment manufacturers, and Siemens Mobile signed a contract Thursday to build a joint-venture to develop products based on the TD-SCDMA standard. Over 100 million US dollars will be injected into the project. Siemens will hold a 51 percent stake and Huawei 49 percent.

Mazda Adopts G-BOOK for Telematics

Mazda and Toyota today announced that they have reached a basic agreement on providing Mazda owners with G-BOOK, a Toyota-developed network information service. Mazda aims to introduce this service from 2005. Toyota began providing the G-BOOK service to Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd. last August and has already announced similar agreements with Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation.

Panasonic Targets 40M Handsets by '06

According to Teruo Katsura, Managing Director and Member of the Board of Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd, (PMC), Panasonic is targeting a1 trillion yen, in sales and 40 million handset production schedule for 2006, and is aiming at an 8% global market share in terms of terminal shipments by 2006. Speaking at a strategic briefing today, Katsura said that PMC wants to boost its sales 250% of its 2003 levels and hit GSM hard in Asia in particular.

Panasonic to Launch GSM 3G Mobile Blitz

Today, Teruo Katsura and Panasonic Mobile Communications announced something we’ve been lusting for over two years: A Japanese maker with brilliant technology showing the true grit to attack the world market!

We were fiddling around with Panasonic’s new FOMA 900i-series phone (not at a store near you in Europe or the United States, unfortunately) and noticed the plastic battery cover kept on falling off. At that moment, Katsura-san, managing director and member of the board of Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. (PMC) – who we were rubbing shoulders with – turned around and said “Don’t Worry! These are only the test models!” We had a great chat with Katsura-san, who earlier today announced Panasonic’s aggressive move into GSM, Europe, Asia and the world; but that, the X700, the X60, and X66 are for later in this article. Having handled the P900i, we think it’s a cracker. It’s sleek and light and full of action, a folding design that’s beautiful in its simplicity and feather-light to touch (Oh! So far has FOMA come…!) but packing a full 3G punch – plus an SD card that plugs into a whole range of Matsushita/Panasonic equipment for what the marketing guys used to call a “richer multimedia environment.” Heavyweight congratulations to Panasonic for delivering a killer 3G phone!

The best news we have is that, aside from our love at first sight with Panasonic’s 900i, the model is alive and well and officially on sale mamonaku (soon). Of course, that could mean anytime from today, Feb. 10, to the next 10 days, although for probity’s sake, Totaro Uchiyama, manager of PMC’s Overseas Mobile Terminal Division, says the launch will be before the end of February.

Cell-Phone Inventor Touts Broadband Wireless

Cell-Phone Inventor Touts Broadband WirelessIn 1973 Martin Cooper, the inventor of the first portable handset, was the first person to make a call on a cell phone (from Motorola to arch-rival Bell.) Now he’s Chairman of ArrayComm, which has developed its iBurst Personal Broadband System based on adaptive array antenna technology. According to the company, iBurst allows mega-bit-per-second cellular bandwidth with much better efficiency than anything extant 3G systems can provide. In today’s exclusive WWJ interview, Cooper argues that 4G is already here; launches broadsides at carriers, engineers, and handset makers who have yet to fulfill the promise of wireless phones; and charges that, after “years of hype,” the industry has failed to deliver on 3G. He also relates his vision for the mobile space: “The Internet will engender thousands of different [mobile] applications.” This interview is a WWJ Classic. Full Program Run-time 17:38