We missed the this one somehow last week, KDDI has announced Opera Widgets will be available in December on three of their latest handsets; Toshiba W56T, Sony Ericsson W54S and Sanyo W54SA. Branded as “au one Gadget” by KDDI, the widgets provide instant access to services such as RSS feeds, game results, weather, traffic information, stocks, news, and social networking services. This is the first time Opera Widgets have shipped on mobile phones.
As predicted, SoftBank Mobile announced their latest handset line-up for the upcoming “sales battle” of the winter 2007 season. The company has new 10 models on offer – 7 coming from Sharp alone – which will begin rolling out by the middle of November through the end of December. They have a dedicated Flash site Here and we’ve posted a few details with images after the jump.
The fall and winter 2007 handset season is officially upon us now with au announcing their new series of models will hit the dori by middle of November. The latest line-up also claims one ‘world first’ with a co-op between Samsung and Hitachi, on the W53H – Wooo, touting a 2.8 inch QVGA organic EL display targeting users hooked on 1Seg digital-tv. More details with pics and links after the jump.
Sony and KDDI will enable digital music to be shared between Sony portable and home-use music players and mobile phones on KDDI’s network. The new joint service, dubbed auxSony Music Project, will start from December through free software upgrades, will allow music files to be freely transferred between some of their products, according to this press release.
NTT DoCoMo and KT Freetel just announced that in November they will set up a venture fund in Korea to invest in promising mobile and IT firms. Through the fund, DoCoMo and KTF expect to identify promising companies for tie-ups in technology and other opportunities in the mobile and IT sectors. The fund will will operate for six years, with an option for a two-year extension, and will be managed by KTBnetwork Co., Ltd.
There has been a fair amount of speculation (see here and here) about pricing strategies, related to future handset subsidies and voice minute charges, for mobile operators in Japan based on regulation suggestions made in a recent report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
