DoCoMo has announced they will unveil their next 700i-series line-up of FOMA 3G handset models this afternoon at a press conference to be held at Roppongi Hills Tower starting at 15:00 JST. They will broadcast a live video stream of the proceedings – Here. The on-demand version will also be available to view shortly afterwards Here.
Since it’s ‘the big day’ we thought that it would be fitting to post a follow-up to our original comments back in January. While there has been an incredible amount of discussion around this topic over the last few months, the observation below from Russell over at Mowser pretty much sums it up best.
The CIAJ has released their annual Telecommunication Equipment Production and Trade Figures report covering fiscal 2006. The total value of production was pegged at 2.589 billion yen, down 5.7%, slipping back to negative growth for the fiscal year. Growth categories include wireless network equipment posting 212.7 million yen, up 1.2% over the previous year, of which fixed telecommunication devices accounted for 125.6 million yen an increase of 5.6% YoY. Wireline parts posted 19.1 billion yen which reflects a positive growth of 8.5% compared to fiscal 2005.
Nuance Communications and Time Warner announced yesterday they have signed a definitive agreement whereby Nuance will acquire Tegic Communications a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL and a developer of embedded software for mobile devices. Tegic brings industry-leading T9 predictive text input software, which has shipped on more than 2.5 billion devices, and next-generation integrated text and touch input solutions to Nuance’s portfolio of voice-enabled applications for device control, mobile search, email and text messaging.
This May, members of the official Screening Committee for the 6th Annual Mobile Marketing Awards convened award prizes to 19 companies for excellence in advertising and marketing using mobile. There were over 314 entries to the competition, an increase of more than 100 applications over the previous year, demonstrating the rising number and variety of companies using mobile. The Awards Ceremony is scheduled for July 19th, at the ANA Intercontintental in Tokyo.
According to a report from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, via AFX on Forbes, DoCoMo is expected to miss its target for buying back its shares after the firm’s free cash flow, the main source of funding, fell sharply in the 2006 fiscal year which ended March 31st.
