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Vodafone Rolling Out New V401D Handset

Vodafone KK announced today that from June 23 it will offer the V401D by Mitsubishi Electric [image] which features the industry’s first control pad that can be operated by finger tracing. According to the company, the V401D’s side touch pad makes it easy to operate functions like screen scrolling and camera zoom by finger tracing. The handset also comes with a jump touch feature that lets users record often-used functions via different tracing patterns so desired functions can be called up instantly, also the 2-megapixel Super CCD Honeycom camera is activated when the lens cover is opened, see footage of this phone in our Summer Handset Parade on Video here.

NTT DoCoMo's Nakamura: New and Luke Warm!

In a series of subtle and not so subtle remarks that made it clear all is not well at NTT DoCoMo, new president and CEO Masao Nakamura vowed to recover the company’s tarnished record of delivering huge profits. He also said the company would plunge into Asia for global revenue expansion, just like ex-CEO Keiji Tachikawa vowed to do in 2001. Beyond that, Nakamura promised that DoCoMo would put the customer first — but then said he’d put the shareholder first; later, apparently contradicting the propaganda put out by i-mode boss Takeshi Natsuno last week, he said he wasn’t sure how big the market for FeliCa was going to be. But there was plenty of new news broached by Nakamura and he’s set some hard targets in his (somewhat foggy) sights.

Carlyle Group & Kyocera Buy DDI

U.S. buyout specialist Carlyle Group and Kyocera Corp. are right now announcing details of their purchase of keitai mini and Personal Handy Phone (PHS) operator DDI Pocket from KDDI. Carlyle and Kyocera are expected to snap up a 90 percent stake in DDI Pocket in the $2.1 billion deal. The purchase is sure to give Kyocera, a major PHS phone and base-station maker, a platform to hit the booming China market and gives KDDI a chance to offload the strugging DDI unit (now down to its last 3 million subs) as au concentrates on improving its CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN service against a resurgent DoCoMo. Under the deal announced yesterday, Carlyle will own 60%, Kyocera 10% and KDDI will keep the remaining 10%.

Korea Considers MVNO Boost for 3G

Korea plans to introduce the “mobile virtual network operator” model to their local telecom industry, with the objective of stimulating market competition and generating new revenue streams through the expansion of data-based services in the industry’s transition to 3G. The Ministry of Information and Communication and the state-run Korea Information Strategy Development Institute began a joint research project last week to discuss the direction and phasing in of MVNO.

Mobile Digital TV: Not (Yet) to a 3G Celly

Today, Portable Reportable looks at the future of cell phone broadcasting and consider what will happen when cell phones will be able to received digital TV broadcasts. NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have quite different plans on how consumers will use digital TV. KDDI appears to be planning to allow the handset to receive digiTV and then use the phone’s 3G data connection as the viewer feedback, marketing, and sales channel — similar to how the FM Keitai works now with analog radio and the preinstalled BREW application.
Full program run-time: 5:01Portable Reportable audio updates are short, 3- to 5-minute news items in MP3 format. You can listen via PC or download and copy to your portable player for tomorrow morning’s commute. — Eds.

Why Sony PDAs Failed in US, but Not Japan

Sony’s design flaws, and ultimate failure, also came from a misunderstanding of its target audience, as well as poor design. But size wasn’t the problem, rather it was usability by the American consumer. (An interesting and almost-compelling analysis of differences between US and Japanese consumers that goes beyond the odious “American thumbs are too big” argument; well worth a read as this issue directly applies to 3G cell phones. — Ed.)