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NEC Telecom China to Launch Get Personal Brand Strategy

NEC Corporation today announced that NEC Telecommunications (China), a new company and a business entity established in May 2004 to actively pursue mobile solution business in China, introduced a new branding strategy “Get Personal” (Chinese-English translation) to further expand its mobile business in China. Along with the campaign, NEC reveals its new strategy to enter into the mid-low range product market segment to appeal to a wider range of consumers in China. The three N10X series of products with seven color variations, which are also being announced today, are one of the key products for the new strategy.

DoCoMo's F900iC Price Comparisons

The sale of DoCoMo’s F900iC, the only FeliCa-enabled FOMA (3G) terminal, started in Japan the first week of August. Herewith, we present a rough translation of a useful chart showing price breakdowns for all F900i-series handsets now available. We’re (more than a little bit) surprised at how much the upgrade charge (to get the latest model) varies by region. At one electronic retail chain, the new contract price on an F900iC in Tokyo is 33,375 yen; in Osaka, 15,700 yen.

MediaSeek Develops OCR for BREW

MediaSeek announced that it has successfully developed an optical character reader (OCR) engine designed to be used in camera phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. The BREW OCR extension extracts and analyzes text image captured with the built-in camera, enabling users to display actual text data on a mobile device’s screen.

Softbank Testing New 3G Standard

Softbank Corp and eAccess Ltd plan to step up their testing of next-generation cell-phone systems by this fall to collect more data. The companies are working toward launching TDD (time division duplex) cell-phone services, which are suitable for high-speed data communications. Accumulating sufficient test data is deemed key to securing a slot when the Ministry of Telecommunications allocates frequencies for TDD services as early as 2005.

DoCoMo to Launch Motorola 3G Phone

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo will offer a new 3G handset made by Motorola in spring 2005. DoCoMo is also (apparently) planning to supply terminals coming from Nokia as well. The article notes that forcast increasing global demand and product improvements by major overseas manufacturers, indicates a competative creep on the traditional domestic handset makers.

DoCoMo to Launch i-mode Disaster Message Board Service in English

NTT DoCoMo Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries announced that they will add English language capability to the i-mode® Disaster Message Board service beginning September 1, 2004. DoCoMo set up this electronic bulletin board service in Japanese last January, to be activated in the event of a major calamity such as a high-magnitude earthquake. The bulletin board will enable i-mode subscribers within the disaster area to post messages in order to notify family and friends of their personal safety and whereabouts. The service was launched in order to ensure communication and prevent a degradation in network performance, since an overflow of voice calls and data packet transmissions would likely follow a major disaster.