Sign of the Times
Sign of the Times

Sign of the Times

Toshiba Exits Music by Selling EMI

Toshiba Corp. has announced that it will sell its entire stake in Japanese label Toshiba EMI Ltd. to Britain’s EMI Group Plc, saying that it would sell its stake for about 21 billion yen ($179 million). One of Japan’s major music and entertainment companies, Toshiba EMI is currently controlled 45 percent by Toshiba and the remaining 55 percent by the British music group. Toshiba accepted an offer from the EMI Group as “the music content business today is less relevant to other businesses within the Toshiba Group,” it said in a statement.

DoCoMo Finds Handsets Cloned in China

Cell phones “cloned” by using IC cards from NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s FOMA handsets were found to have been used in China and other countries illegally, according to sources. In six cases, perpetrators are thought to have taken the IC cards from disused third-generation cell phones and inserted them into other handsets, creating cloned cell phones. DoCoMo, which had previously insisted cloning its cell phones was “technically impossible,” admitted it had confirmed such clones had been found through in-house investigations.

UPDATE: DoCoMo has issued a coment [in Japanese] about this article stating that it’s a legacy issue with older FOMA model handsets. They state the function to refuse a connection with the DoCoMo side switchboard was added as of February 2006.

Fujitsu Bets Big on WiMax

Fujitsu wants to get back into the wireless race in North America by being a major U.S. player in the race to build high speed wireless broadband WiMax networks. Last month, Fujitsu announced a whole new line of WiMax products covering every major component in the WiMAX network, including silicon solutions, electronic devices, radio access network solutions, professional services and backhaul infrastructure solutions. The company presented two new high performance base stations designed for indoor or outdoor use.

Mobile Oracle from Kyoto

One of the most famous tourist traps in Kyoto, Japan, the venerable Kiyomizu-dera temple has jumped on the digital bandwagon, their solution is a credit-card sized charm. Printed on its surface are eight deity of good fortune. The image of deity actually hides a URL encoded with an embedded FPcode (Fine Picture code). This is a code system developed by Fujitsu [see our CEATEC video — Eds], an extension of the QR code which has become the de-facto system for Japanese K-tai terminals. 2D FPcode pattern utilizes a near-transparent color ink, and easily printed over the existing picture without spoiling it.

The Middle Man in Wireless Content

Derek Kurton, formally in charge of strategizing and building Disney’s wireless efforts, has posted an interesting article about the way carriers deal with mobile content in the US: It’s too bad the US hasn’t seen the adoption of the democratic Asian model, where carriers put up just about all content available, and let the customers decide which is bad, which is good, and which belongs at the top of the decks. This model has worked wonders in Japan and Korea, and would work even better when joined by new emerging solutions in custom UIs, search, segmentation and discovery.

Brad Pitt Selling for SoftBank

Building on SoftBank’s TV commercial branding campaign – the company retained Cameron Diaz for a series of spots to coincide with the official patchover from Vodafone in early October – we notice that Brad Pitt has signed-on for round two. Mr. Pitt does not have any lines, the 15sec. TVCM simply blasts ‘Walk This Way’ by Aerosmith as he is seen wandering through what appears to be a crowded street market in Mumbai.