Events
Events

Events

CTIA Wireless Event in Las Vegas

CTIA in Vegas - Video ReportWe’re finally back, and fully recovered, from the the annual CTIA Wireless event held last month in Las Vegas. As you might imagine living large on the strip for almost a whole week took a certain degree of – ahem – stamina, but we did manage to spend some valuable time the show floor, had several meetings in the VIP lounge, some interviews in the media room and a few ‘interesting’ connections in Caesars Palace.

While it’s only be fair to expect, considering the current economic times, that YoY attendance would be down as was the case during Mobile World Congress in February. That being said, the trade exhibitors – and delegates in general – seemed plenty up-beat with both Samsung and LG front and center in full force with along with all the usual suspects taking hefty square footage at LVCC. Of course there were a few Japanese players represented with DoCoMo, Fujitsu and Kyocera, who had an entire section of Sanyo handsets, both taking space to demo their products and services.

Kyocera Demos iBurst at CTIA

Kyocera Communications, a sales, marketing and service organization for Kyocera and Sanyo-branded products in the Americas, presented their technology portfolio of four broadband wireless devices at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas. Along with its full line of mobile phones, the company showed a prototype all-in-one LTE base station along with three iBurst terminal devices in its booth at this years event.

Mobile World Congress 2009 – Video Reports

Mobile World Congress 2009 - Video ReportsHola – we are finally back in the groove here from our MWC adventure last month. The congress was chaos as usual this year with the predictable rush of news, presentations and evening event hopping. While attendence YoY was down, almost 50,000 players managed the annual trek and, like many, we made some fantastic connections. Yoroshiku!

Even though the main stage keynotes were, to be polite, ‘not valuable’ we were inspired by the opening address from Anssi Vonjoki at the Mobile Peer Awards. Indeed, these are the times when winners are built. Also of note, the Father of imode, and now professor at Keio University, Takeshi Natsuno gave a well-documented video presentation titled Toward Global Evolution of the Mobile Industry. The opening remarks suggested that his comments might seem controversial and that since leaving DoCoMo last spring; “I am enjoying a happy life.. just because now I can say whatever I believe”. That 20-mins was far more insightful, especially considering the caliber of delegates attending, than all of the other CEO dog & pony shows we saw – combined. While on the topic of Japanese innovation, we bumped into Masahiro Ito from YAPPA, our interview with him last spring is Here, and got a quick on-cam. demo of some of their latest UI offerings. The company apparently has major news coming later this month at the Game Developers Conference and were in Barcelona to promote the launch of their Spin UI Developers Network portal.

In summary we saw glimmers of hope, from the largest and smallest of companies, caught-up with existing clients while meeting some new prospects, had a blast at several of the mixer events and will never forget living like the locals for a week 😎

NEC to Display LiMo Handsets at MWC

According to this press release, NEC will be present at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. NEC is a major player in all areas of the event, with a high profile presence at the conference and on the exhibition floor. As the leading provider of mobile handsets to operators in Japan, NEC will showcase a variety of recent Japanese models that feature unique designs, architectures, touch screens, user interfaces and brand collaborations. NEC’s series of handsets are LiMo Foundation certified devices that capitalize on the LiMo Platform, the industry’s first collaboratively developed Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. Full details Here.

Tokyo Game Show 2008 Video Report

Tokyo Game Show 2008 Video ReportIt was yet another exciting TGS event here in Tokyo, running October 9 – 12, and the ‘Ready For Game Time’ theme was splashed around Makuhari Messe with plenty of next-generation mobile games coming out into the public eye. Wireless Watch Japan was on site – as always – to get a sneak peek at the latest, and some soon-to-be greatest, offerings coming out from the usual software powerhouses.

While we didn’t make it out there for Cosplay Saturday, like last year, we noticed a marked improvement in performance on the latest handset models and saw several very cool networked products that are sure to please above average casual gamers.

CEATEC 2008 – A Peek at the Future

We spent most of last week out at Makuhari Messe running around the CEATEC tradeshow with clients visiting from overseas. While we were considerably distracted, catering to their specific focus, it was certainly interesting – as always – to get a glimpse of the mobile future. Of course while most of the usual players were on-site with their wares and the media was swarming to get the inside skinny, btw: plenty of great material from Tech-On Here, two of the most obvious trends we noticed was a definite move towards green technology along with next-generation networks and handsets.

This concept model – the Voyage – from KDDI was a prefect example of innovation aimed at solving one of the major challenges, never enough juice, increasingly faced by mobile users. There was not much in the way of details on that unit when we asked at the time however based on past experience with AU Designs it would be reasonable to expect something like this hitting the street a few years from now and we’ll be digging for more intell. on this one! Meanwhile, some of the other concepts on display especially the Ply device with it’s built-in projector and their Trio design – hint: watch the video demos launched via ‘prototype’ icons on lower nav. bar – were also attracting the crowds.

All Systems Go for Tokyo Game Show

CESA has just issued a press release with final details for this TGS 2008. The total number of exhibitors this year will be 209, including 89 exhibitors from overseas. The number of booths has marked a new record of 1768. As of August 18, they received entries of a total of 613 titles by 64 corporations and organizations. A list of the participating companies is provided on the official English website. We’re looking forward to another Great Tokyo Game Show! Meanwhile, here’s our video from 2007.

Wireless Japan 2008 at Tokyo Bigsite

The 14th annual Wireless Japan conference and exhibition is set to kick-off at Tokyo Bigsite for 3 full days next week (wOOt!) focused on current and future mobile industry challenges and opportunities. EXPO COMM WIRELESS JAPAN 2008 will cover the fundamental technology that maintains the wireless broadband network and explore recent trends in standardization, hot applications and solutions for wireless network technology. Of course WWJ will be there as we have been in years past.

Tokyo Game Show 2008

Here we go again! TGS 2008 is gearing up for what will clearly be yet another great event with 180,000 expected delegates attending the show which runs October 9-12 at Makuhari Messe. Organized by the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA), this ‘must see’ tradeshow estimates 170 exhibitors will fill 1,550 booths with nothing but the best in next-generation gaming products. See our video coverage from 2007 Here.

Pocket Film Festival Opens in Japan

The Pocket Film Festival in Japan, showing movies made entirely on mobile phone cameras, kicked-off today in Yokohama. Forty-eight films, chosen from more than 400 entries from 18 countries — including Japan, Singapore, China, South Korea and Germany — will screen in competition at the weekend event, organized by the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The competition has two categories, one for films to be shown on regular screens and the other for films to be viewed on phones. The winning film will receive 500,000 yen (US$4,500).