Terminal Technology
Terminal Technology

Terminal Technology

NTT DoCoMo and Motorola Announce 3G FOMA Handset Developement

NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Motorola Inc. and Motorola Japan Ltd. announced today that they have signed an agreement to jointly develop a FOMA handset targeting business users by taking advantage of high-speed 3G FOMA technologies. Commercialization is scheduled for spring 2005. The new handset, which is compatible with GSM/GPRS technologies, will be the first FOMA model that may be used outside of Japan. Unlike i-mode®-capable phones, the handset will enable access to the internet through mopera® or any other available internet connection service. What’s more, its browser will be able to display standard web pages. Full Press Release Here.

MediaSeek Develops OCR for BREW

MediaSeek announced that it has successfully developed an optical character reader (OCR) engine designed to be used in camera phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices. The BREW OCR extension extracts and analyzes text image captured with the built-in camera, enabling users to display actual text data on a mobile device’s screen.

DoCoMo to Launch Motorola 3G Phone

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, DoCoMo will offer a new 3G handset made by Motorola in spring 2005. DoCoMo is also (apparently) planning to supply terminals coming from Nokia as well. The article notes that forcast increasing global demand and product improvements by major overseas manufacturers, indicates a competative creep on the traditional domestic handset makers.

Fuel-Cell Mobile Phones for Digital TV

KDDI has teamed up with Japanese mobile-phone manufacturers to develop a fuel-cell-powered phone equipped with functions for receiving terrestrial digital TV broadcasting. KDDI has signed joint development agreements with Toshiba and Hitachi. Although the two manufacturers will develop fuel-cell-equipped mobile phones separately on the basis of their own technology, they will use the same user interface that includes the fuel inlet.

Openwave to Support i-mode Phone

Openwave Systems Inc., the leading provider of open software products and services for the communications industry, today announced a collaborative agreement with SAGEM, a major international player in telecommunications manufacturing, to deliver the SG321i, one of the first i-mode-compliant phones to be produced by a European manufacturer, to Bouygues Telecom, a French mobile operator acknowledged for its policy of innovation. The phone will use the Openwave Mail Client for i-mode and Openwave Mobile Browser V.7 (V7 Browser), the flagship application from Openwave Phone Suite Version 7.

Samsung: World's First Amorphous Silicon 2.6-inch VGA LCD

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, the world’s largest provider of TFT-LCD display panels, today announced the world’s first a-Si (Amorphous Silicon) 2.6-inch TFT LCD with VGA image quality. Using a-Si technology, mobile phone displays are now capable of displaying the same VGA format found on notebook PCs and desktop monitors. With almost seven times the resolution of a 42-inch high-definition LCD TV at 300 pixels per inch (ppi), an a-Si enabled mobile phone can be used as a high quality mobile TV.