A local assemblyman from Tottori Prefecture was busted Thursday for purchasing narcotics, police said. The arrest of Susumu Ota, member of the Kurayoshi Municipal Assembly, was followed up by raids on six locations. Ota denies the allegation.
Japan’s domestic shipments of cell phones posted year-on-year growth for the second straight month in December, an industry body said on Thursday, as new-model camera phones breathed life into a saturating market. .
Britain’s first next-generation mobile phone network, 3, launches next month. So it seems like a good time to look at the lessons from the Japanese market, where 3G has been available for 18 months, and ask when we’ll really be enjoying the benefits of 3G in the UK.
Berman warns, however, that with a typical handset cost of 37,000 yen in the latest quarter, “it will require about 23 months to cover [the] cost for upgrade customers.” He goes on to state that this creates a difficult situation for KDDI, wherein there’s lots of room for concern for the cost of the 2G-to-3G upgrade cycle. Remember, too, that KDDI has committed to launching a 1X EV-DO upgrade in late 2003. Will it have to commit to another two-year cycle to convert subscribers to the new system? If so, the expense half of their balance sheet may get a little out of control no matter how strong the revenue side remains.
MTI Ltd. unveiled on Jan. 31 the “TUNA M+,” a Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) application program for wireless operation of a Windows PC by an “au” mobile phone available from KDDI Corp. Users pay a monthly charge of 315 yen.
On a cell phone someday soon, you’ll be able to instruct a personal news-gatherer to scour a dozen media sites for headlines within minutes after they are posted. Are you a football, baseball or soccer fan? A new technology will dish up a playback of your favorite team’s winning goal. The technology turns cell phones into computers that can download and execute programs just like PCs.
