New Tech & Services
New Tech & Services

New Tech & Services

CEATEC Japan 2003: The Future of Wireless

CEATEC Japan 2003: The Future of WirelessThe Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) is Asia’s premiere trade show for information technology and electronics sectors, including the fields of imaging, information and communications. This event brings together the complete spectrum of new technologies with a total of 505 companies and organizations, including almost every major Japanese electronics and communications company, 170 exhibitors from 16 counties and regions worldwide, exhibited in 2,460 booths. We visited KDDI to take a closer look at their prototype Sanyo Digital TV phone, talked to the Kyocera folks about the upcoming convergence of GSM and CDMA and interviewed DoCoMo about their IT-House service offering coming soon for 3G FOMA handsets. Full Program Run-time 20:39

Sony and NTT DoCoMo Form Joint Venture Co. for FeliCa Business

Sony Corporation and NTT DoCoMo, Inc. have agreed to form a Joint Venture Company to develop new services based on mobile phones equipped with Sony’s contactless IC Card technology FeliCa(R). The Joint Venture is targeted for establishment in January 2004. Discussions between Sony and DoCoMo will continue to finalize the details of this company which will be named: FeliCa Networks, Inc.

High-Speed Networking: The Next Generation

Move over radio waves. Forget about infrared. And pull Bluetooth. There’s a new “wireless-like” communication system in development, with some of the most interesting recent work being done in Japan. Why have another standard you ask? Make no mistake about it. PDAs and mobile computers are here to stay. In fact, they are likely to evolve into an entirely new generation of so-called wearable computers.

Sony, NTT DoCoMo to Form Joint Venture

Sony Corp and NTT DoCoMo Inc jointly announced on Oct 27 that they have agreed to form a joint venture company to develop new services based on mobile phones equipped with Sony’s contactless IC Card technology called FeliCa. The joint venture, to be called FeliCa Networks Inc, is targeted for establishment in January 2004.

Oki Gets Animated with 3D Digital Avatars

Pick your disguise: I want to be Dr. Jekyll as my mini-me. WWJ was pleasantly surprised last week to find that one of Japan’s usually less-covered semiconductor companies, Oki Electric Industrial, has just come up with 3D digital avatar-producing software called FaceCommunicator-BBE that should allow mobile phone users to appear as a character that mimics (in real time) the user’s facial expressions (anger, doubt, happiness, etc.) during calls. Given Japan’s love of anime (think Pokemon), the software could be a real boon for those obsessed with being really cute – or those, for whatever reason, who don’t want to show their faces during videophone conversations.

Nihon Enterprise and helloNetwork Asia Announce Mobile Partnership

Nihon Enterprise and helloNetwork Asia today announced an agreement that will further enhance the two companies’ strong domestic and global presence in the field of mobile content distribution. The partnership will enable Nihon Enterprise to expand its content distribution channels by utilizing helloNetwork’s unique Java-based Mobile Media technology for premiere content distribution.