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Tomy Looks to Mobile Phones for Driving New Toy Sales

Tomy Looks to Mobile Phones for Driving New Toy Sales

The wireless road warriors from Tomy have put cell phones in the drivers’ seat with these tiny remote control cars that can zip along in response to signals from infrared-equipped handsets. Licensed by Disney, Putica (petite car), comes in three classic Disney cartoon character designs from the 40s and 50s: Susie the hot rod, steam engine Casey Jr. and Pedro the plane. Overseas readers may not recognize these anthropomorphic mechanicals from the past, but these are by no means obscure for Japanese consumers. Regional marketing of secondary and even obscure characters from old Disney cartoons have become a huge spin-off industry here. Susie, the little blue hot rod, has her own line of character goods. These hot-rods are priced at a mere 1680 yen. To synch controls with most mobile phones, drivers can download a free software application from the online Tomy Putica website.

NEC to Supply Platform and i-mode Mobile Handset for MTS Russia

NEC announced today that it has received orders of Mobile Internet Platform and mobile handsets for Mobile TeleSystems (MTS)’s i-mode(TM) service. MTS Russia’s largest mobile phone operator in Russia and CIS which is currently holding over 40 million subscribers and over 35% market share. i-mode operation in Russia is scheduled to start in September 2005, and further operation is scheduled in Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Belarus in the future. Expansion of high-level functionality for the mobile Internet services in Russia is moving forward, and advanced and rich services are becoming a reality in near future. “Russia is one of the important markets for NEC.” said Noboru Wakita, Senior General Manager of NEC’s Mobile Solutions Operations Unit.

Toyota Announces New Telematics Service G-BOOK ALPHA

Toyota announced today that it has completely renovated its G-BOOK telematics service, which was initiated in October 2002, to create G-BOOK ALPHA. TMC will begin offering the new service on vehicles equipped with G-BOOK ALPHA-compatible navigation systems. G-BOOK ALPHA is a next-generation telematics service that takes safety, security and comfort to the next level. In addition to offering, as standard, the emergency call service known as HELPNET, which can alert the police or fire department to summon emergency vehicles in the event of a traffic accident or medical emergency, G-BOOK ALPHA also employs a car audio system that allows users to make on-the-go purchases of music they want to enjoy?when they want to enjoy it?through the use of G-BOOK ALPHA’s new digital rights management (digital copyright protection) system, called G-DRM.

DoCoMo Unveils Motorola Tri-Band 3G Smartphone

DoCoMo Unveils Motorola Tri-Band 3G SmartphoneNTT DoCoMo has partnered with Motorola to roll-out a hybrid FOMA/PDA handset with global roaming, full Internet browsing, PC mail and wireless LAN access. Launched today at a low key Tokyo press conference, the new M1000 [.jpg image] is aimed squarely at Japanese business users looking to integrate a lot of functionality into one pocket-sized package. DoCoMo has dumped both i-mode and its new FeliCa applications to make room for a tri-band system (W-CDMA, GSM and GPRS) and Internet access via Opera’s 7.5 browser. The company’s trophy handset opens Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs as well as PDF files, and allows multiple email functions including POP and IMAP email. It’s also compatible with 80211.b WiFi (Wow!). While equipped with pre-requisite Bluetooth compatibility, this new Motorola is not loaded with DoCoMo’s flagship product, i-mode access — a first for a major handset since 1999, as far as we can determine. Will this be a cool crossbreed or Frankenstein monster?

Some of Japan's Cool New Apps

In a telephone interview with a research company in Toronto last night, I was asked for examples of the coolest new applications or services in Japan. Without a doubt, I answered, mobile music and the Chaku Uta Full song download services are really eating up packet bandwidth. The week before last, KDDI announced that the cumulative downloads for EZ Chaku Uta Full (provided via the CDMA 1X EV-DO WIN network) had surpassed 3 million as of 1 March 2005, less than four months after the 19 November 2004 launch. The company added that the 1 million and 2 million milestones were achieved on 5 January and 5 February, respectively.

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Sharp's New SL-C1000 Zaurus

Last fall, Sharp released the SL-C3000, a Zaurus model with a built-in hard drive. Now they have announced a version of that device without the microdrive. It will not include Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but the SL-C1000 will have an SD card slot and a CompactFlash Type II slot, allowing the use of wireless networking cards. Running Linux on a 416-MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor with 64 MB of RAM, the SL-C1000 will go on sale in Japan on March 18.