Vodafone K.K. President Shiro Tsuda said Wednesday the Japanese unit of British mobile phone service company Vodafone Group PLC will encourage its customers to shift to 3G handsets for faster data communications. “Vodafone will offer its last 2G handset next year and no more 2G later,” Tsuda said in an interview with Kyodo News.
ESPN and The Walt Disney Internet Group are to launch the Japanese version of X Games Mobile, a new content-based service for wireless consumers. KDDI and Vodafone have agreed to make X Games Mobile available to their customers. X Games Mobile will offer X Games-branded content including news and information, screensavers, ring tones, wallpaper, photos, logos, and streaming audio and video.
When NTT DoCoMo unveiled its latest third-generation mobile phones on Nov. 17, gadget lovers were not disappointed. The new handsets, manufactured by five leading Japanese electronics makers, can download videos, play games, pay for groceries at convenience stores, and work as remote controls for TVs and other devices. Oh — they also make and receive phone calls. “This is the epitome of a 3G phone,” says Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s managing director for multimedia services. Not to be upstaged, Japan’s other carriers are putting the finishing touches on their own new phones, featuring everything from music downloads to international video-calling on super-sharp color displays.
Fixed-line ISP Softbank is hatching plans to enter the Japanese 3G market as a service provider. According to reports in the Japanese press this morning, Softbank has asked the government to grant it access to the radio frequencies used by KDDI, Vodafone and NTT DoCoMo.
C.A. Mobile, a Tokyo-based online content provider affiliated with Cyber Agent, has begun auctioning on iBid, a mobile auction site, in collaboration with 0ch, a cell-phone TV station. The site is the first that uses video to profile auctioned items. The service is supported by KDDI’s EZweb and NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode services. There is no charge for viewing iBid. 0ch is free for i-mode users, but costs 105 yen per month for EZweb users.
Sharp has signed an agreement with the Japanese division of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications [Press Release in Japanese] to collaborate on development of cell-phone handsets based on the Symbian operating system for NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G service in Japan. The two companies plan to share selected hardware while developing 3G phones that will be unique to the Sharp and Sony Ericsson brands.
