Sharp Corp. said Friday that it will start selling later this month in Europe two new 3G models specifically designed for that market. The Osaka-based consumer electronics maker, known for its “Aquos” brand LCD TVs, will supply the new mobile phone handsets to Vodafone Group Plc, a Sharp spokesman said. He declined to comment on the price tag, which will reportedly be set in the EUR150 to EUR200 range, on par with similar cellphones sold in Europe.
Willcom has announced an updated model of their hyper-popular smartphone, the W-ZERO3 series by Sharp. The WS004SH will hit the streets here on June 22nd and will be running pretty much the same spec. as the original version, with a couple of small exceptions. They have doubled the onboard flash memory from 128mb and added a 300,000 item dictionary, including a Japanese-English “DicLand Ver1.1” suite. Otherwise, it’s the same Windows Mobile 5.0 OS on an Intel PXA270 416MHz CPU with no improvement on the 1.3 mega-pixel camera or battery pack which have be the only serious complaint issues from owners who were so eager to buy the debut model last year.
NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and Research In Motion (RIM) announced today that DoCoMo will start marketing RIM’s BlackBerry handheld devices to its corporate customers in autumn 2006. The BlackBerry handheld devices to be sold in Japan will operate on both W-CDMA (UMTS) and GSM/GPRS networks and will be useable around the world for voice and data communications. BlackBerry Enterprise Server software tightly integrates with Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise, and enables secure, push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.
Dentsu Inc. and Mitsubishi Corporation announced today that they will form a business alliance encompassing the production, sale and rights management of Japanese animated works in Japan and globally. Dentsu brings to this partnership significant capabilities in content and creative production in Japan, while Mitsubishi Corporation has built a strong track record in the export of Japanese animated works, particularly focusing on children’s animation. The partners have agreed to actively cooperate in developing businesses that utilize such new media as the Internet and mobile devices.
Japan’s Sanyo Electric Co. said Tuesday it will start repairing defective software in mobile phone handsets it now supplies for KDDI Corp.’s “au” phone service, resulting in an expense of Y1 billion this fiscal year. The Osaka-based electronics manufacturer said all 506,800 handsets of its “W32SA” model for the au service are subject to free repairs.
NEC LCD Technologies, Ltd. today announced that at SID 2006 in San Francisco it will give a presentation and demonstrate a sample of its new 3.5-inch color quarter video graphics array amorphous-silicon TFT liquid crystal display module boasting a viewing angle and contrast ratio of the industry’s highest class for small liquid crystal display modules. This new LCD module was realized by a combination of super-reflective natural light technology, NEC’s proprietary transflective technology for adapting objects to outdoor light.
