Telstra expects more than one million Australians will pay $500 for new handsets, plus an extra $10-$17 per month for content, when the telco launches its own version of the i-mode mobile phone content service before Christmas. The Australian carrier became the first telco in the English-speaking world to sign up with the Japanese telco, NTT DoCoMo, which claims 41 million subscribers for the service in its own country.
Don’t say we haven’t mentioned this one before, but the good ol Brit boys (and girls) at The Reg have spotted that NEC is targeting China for 3G phones. Here it is from the horse’s mouth: NEC is setting up a new company in China with the primary goal of developing the Chinese 3G mobile market. The company, facing declining sales in Japan, believes China will be a vital new growth area particularly in 3G.
Boy-oh-Boy! We are absolutely delighted to have real-time credit-card processing on the WWJ site, courtesy of eSellerate! We have just switched the new subscription processing system ON, and will do a full announcement in this week’s newsletter; there are also new pricing, term, and multi-user-discount options. If you have any problems whatsoever with subscribing, please drop us a note (send mail to support [at] wirelesswatch.jp) and we’ll get back to you immediately. More announcements shortly…
TU Media, a Korean consortium for satellite-based mobile broadcasting service, said on Monday it is in a dispute with Toshiba Corp. over royalties on the Japanese firm’s technology. Toshiba, which has the biggest stake in Japan’s satellite-based mobile TV service consortium, has sent an official document to the Telecommunications Technology Association, a Korean business lobby, requesting the Korean consortium pay it “a royalty of 2 percent per terminal sold, regardless of its type”, says TU Media.
Vodafone K.K. announced today that its Board of Directors passed a resolution to enact a voluntary retirement program. The program includes a special allowance in addition to the normal retirement allowance as well as job placement support. Some 600 employees are eligible for the program. The announcement comes as no surprise in light of the massive losses announced earlier.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. will shift its global strategy in the mobile phone business from capital investment to technological tie-ups, Kyodo news reported late last night.According to the story, NTT president Norio Wada, in what amounted to a veiled attack on former chief Keiji Tachikawa, said DoCoMo planned a smarter overseas investment strategy than his predecessor. “It is possible we will have partners through technological tie-ups or business affiliations,” Wada said in an interview with Kyodo News.
Japan’s leading parking lot operator Park 24 has announced the launch of an experiment designed to test a FeliCa-based cashless payment solution at its Times 24-hour metered parking lots. The experiment, to last through August 15, supports the N504iC and SO504iC. Park 24 currently has 5,225 parking sites with a total of 81,364 parking spaces across Japan.
UTStarcom, Inc, a leading US-based telecom equipment manufacturer, has grown rapidly with a strategy of focusing on China’s market. In the following interview, the Nikkei Weekly interviews Masahiko Yabuki, a board member and general manager of UTStarcom Japan KK, who tells the magazine that he believes W-CDMA has a ropey future in China.
In the burgeoning global WCDMA handset market, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are gaining market share. Hutchison Telecom is reportedly in talks with LG to purchase WCDMA handsets worth 1 billion dollars, or several million units. Last year, Hutchison Telecom procured 3G phones from Motorola and Sony-Ericsson. The carrier, however, experienced a delay in supply of handsets for several months due to fatal defects in software of 3 million units of 3G handsets received from NEC of Japan and Motorola.
Due on the street in Japan this June, we think this could turn out to be a very disruptive technology for digital broadcasters. Japanese firm Solid Alliance, in partnership with Mitsubishi Plastics, Media Ring, and Connect Technologies, has come up with a little pyramidal device [.jpg image] that hooks up to your TV and records video in 3GPP format onto an SD or miniSD card for playback on a cellphone. Two hours’ worth of programming will fit on a 128-megabyte card, and can be played back on any of DoCoMo’s recent FOMA phones or most of the newer Vodafone handsets.
