Terminal Technology
Terminal Technology

Terminal Technology

KDDI Announces New Handset Line-up

KDDI has introduced seven new handsets for it’s fall and winter season. This new lineup has three stand-out models; the Wooo W63H from Hitachi has a first in the world, as of this announcement, 3.1 inch organic EL display with wide VGA liquid crystal, Sharps AQUOS W64SH has a full 3.5 inch LCD, which is said to be offering the best display specifications available to-date and the EXILIM W63CA by Casio is touting an 8.1M camera with face-detection auto-focus. The Panasonic W62P and Kyocera W65K are both waterproof 1Seg digital TV enabled and all devices have Global Passport roaming capabilities along with Felica e-wallets and GPS of course. The Flash Gallery is Here.

SH-Mobile G4 Platform JV Underway

DoCoMo, Renesas, Fujitsu and Sharp announced that they plan to jointly develop the SH-Mobile G4 single-chip LSI device, and a platform incorporating it, to support the HSUPA1/HSDPA2/W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G) mobile telephony standards. DoCoMo and Renesas began joint development work in 2004 on the SH-Mobile G series of single-chip LSI devices, which integrate a baseband processor that supports dual-mode communication and an application processor. The SH-Mobile G4 will be the fourth product to emerge from this collaboration.

iPhone Sees Slow Japan Sales?

At least according to this post on WSJ. While we could take issue with several assurances therein, niggly details aside, it would seem that Steves amazing device is not exactly blowing the doors off at local retails shops after the first predictable wave of sales in early July. That being said the prediction for 1M unit sales in Japan was based on a full year and their price package, handset and monthly fee, is certainly competative enough. As usual there’s much more than meets the eye on a story like this!

American Heritage for the iPhone

Tokyo-based Enfour Inc. and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company have announced the global rollout of the first iPhone and iPod Touch applications featuring the American Heritage dictionaries and other best-selling Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reference titles. This custom-built iPhone application features fully searchable and updated definitions, real-voice audio pronunciations, zoomable graphics, bookmarking, annotation and history.

Panasonic Mobile & NTT Data Form Alliance

Panasonic Mobile Communications and NTT DATA Corp. announced they have reached a basic agreement on a capital and business alliance on Panasonic Mobile & System Engineering (“PMSE”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Panasonic Mobile. NTT DATA will take over 60 percent of the shares issued by PMSE and establish the new, yet to be named, company in Yokohama by October 2008.

Is Mobile WiMax Ready to Compete

The Nikkei Electronics Asia monthly magazine for June has an interesting article focused on the future potential, and challanges, for mobile WiMax. One of the key areas of consideration is the so-called power added efficiency (PAE) of this new platform, which is deemed a serious concern. There are several major players gearing up for launch with the 802.16e standard, in Japan and elsewhere, so the equipment makers would certainly seem to have their hands full in order to increase performance.