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editors

SoftBank Mobile – New Flagship Store

SoftBank Mobile - New Flagship StoreWith the flurry of activity around here lately we are somewhat behind on rolling out this quick video clip shot at SoftBank Mobile’s new Flagship store in Harajuku. Wisely located in Tokyo’s mobile youth grand central, and mere blocks away from KDDI’s Designing Studio, the company was handing out chocolates (a nice touch for Valentines day) and even had a few SoftBank Hawks baseball team personalities in the house to help celebrate their New Open launch event.

While Kitty-chan was apparently not available to promote her newly announced Swarovski Crystal handsets there was a good selection of the latest super sparkle designs, under glass, front and center. Of course the colorful 812SH Pantone series by Sharp were also easy to spot, however, for the most part there was not much in the way of selection for live working models on offer. That being said it’s certainly better than this Virtual Life SoftBank Mobile shop and hopefully the company will get more test-drive units on display in the future. As for our first impressions; it’s a definite improvement, in both size and location, when compared to the Vodafone’s earlier Megastore attempt in Shibuya several years ago.

Toyota Announces New G-BOOK Telematics

Toyota announced that it will begin rolling out its new G-BOOK mX telematics service and a G-Book mX-compatible HDD navigation system with the launch of new vehicles in Japan starting in May. The new G-BOOK includes features such as Probe Communication Traffic Information, which uses data from other vehicles equipped with G-BOOK mX to provide drivers with highly precise information on traffic congestion. G-BOOK mX builds on the proven reliability and security of G-BOOK with the addition of Map-on-Demand – the world’s first technology for automatically delivering differential map data to car navigation systems – to create a more user-friendly and comprehensive telematics service.

New 1Seg Digital TV Tuner Chip

MaxLinear has announced sampling availability of their new MxL7001 IC for mobile TV at 1/10th the packaged area of their MxL5000-family which set the previous record for size. The tuner supports both ISDB-T 1-segment and 3-segment applications and will be available in production quantities early summer 2007. According to the press release, several OEMs are in the latter stages of developing MxL7001 based products to be launched this summer.

IPMobile Announces Major Changes

IPMobile announced that its major shareholder, Multimedia Research Institute Corp., has reached an agreement with Mori Trust Co., Ltd. to transfer its stocks, therefore Mori Trust will become IPMobile’s major shareholder. According to the statement, IPMobile will review its capital structure and continue to raise investments required to launch commercial services. IPMobile is currently in talks with Mori Trust Co., Ltd. and will make an announcement about the timing of the launch and the details of its service once an agreement is reached.

KDDI Hits BREW Milestone

QUALCOMM just announced a number of milestones underscoring how KDDI’s wireless data service, powered by BREW, continues to spur the demand for mobile applications in the Japanese market. In January 2007, KDDI subscribers downloaded more than seven million BREW applications to their mobile phones. The cumulative number of BREW application downloads is now more than 160 million since KDDI first launched BREW in February 2003. Gaming has proven to be one of the most active areas of mobile downloads. According to KDDI, its catalog of high-quality mobile games has grown from 2,000 applications in January 2006 to more than 3,000 gaming applications in January 2007.

RADVISION Solution Adopted by DoCoMo

RADVISION has announced that its ProLab 3G-324M Test Solution was purchased by NTT DoCoMo. ProLab 3G-324M supports connectivity verification and analysis for 3G handset video applications. The feature set includes a simulation of 3G-324M signaling and media, the monitoring of H.223, H.245 and media. In addition, the ProLab 3G-324M Test Solution supports IMTC and GCF test case scenarios.