A first for a Korean manufacturer, LG Electronics Inc. is looking to set foot in the Japanese mobile phone market, the Seoul-based company said over the weekend. LG Electronics, the country’s second-largest electronics company, recently formed a task force to handle negotiations with NTT DoCoMo, the largest wireless communications company in Japan. Executives said that the company is aiming to supply 3G handsets to the Japanese communications giant.
Japan’s Spring handset blitzkrieg is on the attack. Just last week, DoCoMo launched the first barrage with the five-model 901iS-series of phones boasting PDF file navigation capabilities and a four-megapixel model, the D901iS. Today, KDDI counterattacked with a press conference at the New Takanawa Prince Hotel announcing five June-release au handsets to support live analog TV reception and ramped-up EZ television features — plus a new SafetyNavi GPS function.
The handsets: W32SA by Sanyo; W31CA by Casio; W31T from Toshiba; A5511T also Toshiba; and the A5512CA by Casio. They integrate a mix of music and business functions: download capacity for attached mail has been expanded and one of the models, the W31CA, has a 3.2-megapixel camera, which is pretty good (but not as good as DoCoMo’s latest).
Previously, in order to save on packet fees, KDDI’s WIN platform EZ Channel provided late-night video content downloads for later viewing. Flat-rate services have now produced an EZ Television channel for live analog terrestrial TV programming right to the mobile. Dubbed “interactive TV” by KDDI, the new handsets can record TV theme songs, soundtracks and commercial jingles as BGM (background music) via the Chaku Uta full music download feature. There’s also a search & buy function for CDs used in programs or commercials. For an extra fee, users can subscribe to Premium or Deluxe EZ TV services. Premium costs an additional 210 yen/month and adds remote recording functionality; Deluxe allows users to pre-register names and programs for automatic recording at 315 yen.
TOT Corp. PCL, Thailand’s state-owned telecommunication agency, is in talks with two Japanese firms in its search for a partner for its telecom unit to speed up its move to third-generation, or 3G, services. TOT expected to conclude the talks before launching its initial public offering (IPO) in late October, agency president Teerawit Charuwat told reporters.
Vodafone Japan said today they would limit SMS transmissions starting 31 May 2005 as part of new anti-spam measures aimed at making its Vodafone live! mobile Internet service more dependable for customers. Specifically, the number of SMS that can be sent to from a Vodafone KK 3G handset within one day will be limited to 500 starting 31 May 2005. Handsets that exceed this limit will not be able to send additional SMS for the following 20 days.
With little fanfare and no press conference, NTT DoCoMo has released five new 3G FOMA 901iS FeliCa-enabled handsets into the digital world: D901iS (Mitsubishi), F901iS (Fujitsu), P901iS (Panasonic), N901iS (NEC) and SH901iS (Sharp). All have certain features in common with other 901i models, including music players, “3D Sound,” Deco-Mail to decorate email, G-GUIDE interactive TV guide and recording programmer (see the .pdf for full specs). New features include a 4-megapixel recorded resolution camera for the D901iS and a full Web browser on the N901iS. The company says that the 901iS-series is DoCoMo’s first in which all models are equipped for mobile-wallet functions, but the five handsets actually do a lot more than drain virtual bank accounts. The pre-installed Adobe Reader LE, for example, enables 901iS phones to view PDF files downloaded from i-mode sites. The application includes access to all basic PDF functions including scrolling, paging, text searches, bookmarks and page rotation and users can easily email files, dial a number or navigate to a Web link in the file. But wait, there’s more…
At the Mobile Content World Asia Pacific conference in Sydney last week, Graham Gordon, GM Wireless Consumer and Data Services for i-mode alliance partner Telstra, reported “a sensational” 87-percent active user base for its i-mode portal, meaning that users have used the portal more than once in the last 30 days [Should that be ‘at least once’? — Ed.]. Subscription rates to i-mode are more than 500 percent higher than to Telstra’s WAP service and informed observers are predicting that total subscribers will reach 65,000 by the end of May, some 3 months after the hard launch.
