New Tech & Services
New Tech & Services

New Tech & Services

Is Mobile 2.0 Really Just Hype?

Paul Golding at Wireless Wanders posted an interesting op-ed about the hype surrounding mobile 2.0. While it’s clear that he’s looking at this from a Euro/US perspective – especially on the device side – however, we have no doubt there are some valid points contained therein. At the same time it should be also noted that Impress R&D (div. of the major Tokyo-based publisher) released a book last summer called Mobile 2.0 [in Japanese] which would likely shed a little more light on what is actually possible, at least in Japan.

A Tale of Two Mobile Technologies

The recent round of international press devoted to ‘the next big thing for mobile’ has an interesting, and recurring, theme. It started with a fair amount of mainstream media attention devoted to the statements made at CTIA during Visa’s keynote address regarding the evolution of mobile payments. Around the same time we notice that Capt. Kirk went boldly where no ex-pat Canadian would dare go (Toronto in March) to attend this presser with Ted Rogers promoting a new fangled mobile web-cam handset, which the company breathlessly hailed as “a landmark in wireless communications”.

We also noticed this special op-ed from Card Technology about how Sony is potentially challenged to get their m-commerce product outside of Japan. The article did some great work, however there’s plenty of room for a counter-point discussion. One thing rings true, both of these technologies were deployed here in Japan years ago and like the camera-phone will begin making their way into markets overseas in due course.

High-Quality Speech Coding for Mobile

DoCoMo just announced that it has developed speech coding technology, in collaboration with their research labs based in Palo Alto, which will enable better voice quality for mobile phones, yet only requires the low-level computing power of conventional mobile technologies. This new approach apparently targets a wider frequency range of 50Hz – 16kHz, which is approximately the full range of the human voice. By comparison, the frequency range of legacy services is limited to 300Hz – 3.4kHz. There’s a few fancy graphs on this .PDF to demonstrate the performance range.

Encouraging MediaFLO Survey Results

the first results from an extensive consumer survey of attitudes towards mobile TV. The survey, which was conducted by Accenture Japan and included more than 3,000 Japanese consumers, showed that subscribers are far more likely to take up mobile broadcast services when they experience it firsthand. Survey results after the jump.

[We noted in a recent WWJ newsletter that new digital tv spectrum allocation from the ministry is under review and the various lobby groups are in full motion to state their case — Eds]

Find a Guinness with your Phone

Diageo Japan launched a one-click mobile pub search service called “Guinness Navi” on March 17, 2007, just in time for St. Paddys Day. Guinness Navi location based service allows users to search for nearby Guinness outlets easily with their mobile phone, although the venues are currently restricted to Irish pub search within Tokyo’s 23 wards, it plans to increase its scope to other areas, and to dining bars, local bars and other outlets. The system is compatible with all locational technologies from antenna triangulation cell ID, to GPS, WiFi and direct address input and was developed by Tokyo-based Naviblog Corp.

Is America Ready for a Virtual Mobile?

American Venture magazine interviewed Scott Driggers, CEO and Co-Founder of Gemini Mobile Technologies, about whether the American market is ready to explore a virtual world on their cell phone. Gemini is preparing to launch its 3D mobile software platform, eXplo, in the UK or the U.S. Currently, eXplo is driving Softbank Mobile’s 3D virtual world, S! Town, in Japan, which has added 100,000 subscribers since launching in November of 2006. In S! Town, subscribers design and dress their avatar and room, using the virtual world’s currency for purchases.