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MWI Mailing Lists Now Open

The Mobile Web Initiative, part of the W3C and described in this week’s WWJ Newsletter, has set up two public mailing lists: public-bpwg@w3.org (dedicated to discussion associated with the Best Practice Working Group), and public-ddwg@w3.org (dedicated to discussion associated with the Device Description Working Group). If you’re interested in participating in public discussions or if you have something to contribute, the folks running the Initiative would love to have you sign up.

Vodafone Slams Spam

Vodafone Japan said today they would limit SMS transmissions starting 31 May 2005 as part of new anti-spam measures aimed at making its Vodafone live! mobile Internet service more dependable for customers. Specifically, the number of SMS that can be sent to from a Vodafone KK 3G handset within one day will be limited to 500 starting 31 May 2005. Handsets that exceed this limit will not be able to send additional SMS for the following 20 days.

Mitsui Invests in Mobile Multimedia

Japanese corporate powerhouse Mitsui is making moves on international mobile markets. The company has invested US$8.2 million in Buongiorno Vitaminic’s US operations. Mitsui’s equity investment gives the Japanese trading company a minority position in Buongiorno US with shares totaling 19.9 percent. While Buongiorno Vitaminic may sound like a health drink, the company is actually a five-year old Italian multinational handling multimedia content for telephony and digital channels. The company maintains a presence in all major European markets and is pushing into the US as well.

Japan Cell Phone Sales Drop

Domestic shipments of cellular and automobile phones in Japan totaled 44.77 million units in fiscal 2004 that ended March 31, down 12.2 percent from the previous year for the first decrease in three years, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association reported Tuesday.

DoCoMo Announces Five New 3G Wallet Phones

DoCoMo Announces Five New 3G Wallet Phones

With little fanfare and no press conference, NTT DoCoMo has released five new 3G FOMA 901iS FeliCa-enabled handsets into the digital world: D901iS (Mitsubishi), F901iS (Fujitsu), P901iS (Panasonic), N901iS (NEC) and SH901iS (Sharp). All have certain features in common with other 901i models, including music players, “3D Sound,” Deco-Mail to decorate email, G-GUIDE interactive TV guide and recording programmer (see the .pdf for full specs). New features include a 4-megapixel recorded resolution camera for the D901iS and a full Web browser on the N901iS. The company says that the 901iS-series is DoCoMo’s first in which all models are equipped for mobile-wallet functions, but the five handsets actually do a lot more than drain virtual bank accounts. The pre-installed Adobe Reader LE, for example, enables 901iS phones to view PDF files downloaded from i-mode sites. The application includes access to all basic PDF functions including scrolling, paging, text searches, bookmarks and page rotation and users can easily email files, dial a number or navigate to a Web link in the file. But wait, there’s more…

i-mode Getting Results at Telstra

At the Mobile Content World Asia Pacific conference in Sydney last week, Graham Gordon, GM Wireless Consumer and Data Services for i-mode alliance partner Telstra, reported “a sensational” 87-percent active user base for its i-mode portal, meaning that users have used the portal more than once in the last 30 days [Should that be ‘at least once’? — Ed.]. Subscription rates to i-mode are more than 500 percent higher than to Telstra’s WAP service and informed observers are predicting that total subscribers will reach 65,000 by the end of May, some 3 months after the hard launch.