3G
3G

3G

3G FOMA Subscribers Top 30 Million

NTT DoCoMo has just announced that the number of subscribers to their 3G FOMA service surpassed the 30 million mark on November 4, 2006. According to the statement, DoCoMo plans to increase the number of FOMA base stations by 1.5 times year on year by the end of the fiscal year ending March 2007 and aims to expand the coverage area for HSDPA 3.5G, which provides significantly faster speed than the current W-CDMA based data transmission, while developing more new compatible handset models.

Sierra Wireless Teams with Tomen Electronics

Sierra Wireless and Tomen Electronics Corp. today announced they have signed an agreement that designates Tomen as the primary distributor for all Sierra Wireless products in Japan, marking the formal entry of Sierra Wireless into the Japanese 3G wireless market. Under the terms of the agreement, Tomen will offer sales, integration support, and field application engineering support for all Sierra Wireless products in Japan, including both the AirCard and embedded module product lines.

DoCoMo 1H Profits off 20 Percent

NTT DoCoMo Inc.’s net profit for the fiscal first half ended 30 September was 20 percent lower than a year earlier, with the decline in net profit to a great extent due to the absence in the first half of one-off gains of the kind made in the corresponding period of last year (when the company booked a special capital gain of 62 bn yen from the sale of its 20-percent stake in Hutchison 3G UK Holdings Ltd.). DoCoMo reported a first-half net profit of 309.82 bn yen, compared to 385.28 bn yen a year earlier.

Japan's Still the World's High-Tech Testbed

This past week, WWJ’s own Lawrence Cosh-Ishii, our hard-working director of digital media (and pretty much everything else in our humble shop), appeared on US Web radio program "Into Tomorrow," hosted by Dave Graveline. Dave and his crew pop over to Tokyo each year for the annual CEATEC consumer tech show, and he makes it his business to hook up with a slate of guests who can provide insidery gen on what’s happening in Japan…

NTT DoCoMo Announces New 3G, HSDPA Phones

NTT DoCoMo Announces New 3G, HSDPA PhonesNTT DoCoMo, Inc. and its eight regional subsidiaries today announced 14 new 3G FOMA handsets, including the 903i-series, the ‘SIMPURE’ series and N902iL. All 11 new 903i handsets provide a wide range of entertainment functions, said the company. They are equipped for DoCoMo’s Chaku-Uta Full full-track music-downloading service. Five models can play tracks transferred from PCs that were used to download music from sites such as Napster Japan, which offers unlimited access to approximately 1.5 million downloadable tracks for a flat rate. HSDPA-capable models work with the Music Channel service, which enables up to two music programs to be downloaded automatically during the night, and the expanded i-motion video clip for downloading up to 10MB files. All models are compatible with Mega i-appli rich applications, and some are also equipped for “One-segment” digital terrestrial broadcasting.

The new 903i-series offer a number of improved conveniences for daily life. They have IC cards with triple the storage capacity of conventional models, and they come preinstalled with software required to use DoCoMo’s DCMX mobile credit card on DoCoMo’s iD platform. Six 903i models are equipped for the Keitai-Osagashi Service, a GPS service that enables a misplaced handset to be located with a PC.

i-mode Dead Down Under?

i-mode Strategy is reporting that Telstra’s recent launch announcement of their new “Next G” service lacks any reference to the carrier’s past commitment to i-mode. The closing paragraph states: Personally, I’ll probably buy Next G, although I’d prefer a Nokia handset and they seem to be left out in the cold (not to mention NEC who are not on offer for Next G and given their dependence on the success of i-mode, which is finished, will probably close down their mobile division in Australia).