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KDDI and Okinawa Cellular Launch 5 New 3G Handsets

KDDI Corp. and Okinawa Cellular recently announced plans to launch five new handsets from the end of May increasing their new lineup of 3G mobile phones (CDMA 2000 1x), a format that enables high-speed data transmission of up to 144 kbps. All the new phones are Movie Mail-compatible, a function that allows users to shoot and send seamless movies. The new handsets scheduled for launch are the A5401CA manufactured by Casio, the A5402S produced by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, the A5306ST and A1303SA both made by Sanyo, and the A5303H II manufactured by Hitachi.

Disney Dour on US Mobile; Games Don't Rock; Users Don't Use

Disney Internet Group is not expecting its US operations to approach its success in Japan anytime in the near future, one of their executives told me. The guess here is that things will change when color phones saturate the market. One in every three cell phones in the US will have a color display within 6 months, according to Seamus McAteer at Zelos Group, a San Francisco-based technology consulting firm.

Cell-Based Location Services on Target and Japan has Cheapest WLAN on Earth

So far, Japanese carriers haven’t really pushed location services as stand-alone products; they’re sold as “part of” a handset and there are no handsets that are sold only as, or primarily for, navi-service capabilities. Sure, KDDI did do a big marketing push when their first GPS-enabled keitai hit the market in December 2001, but now it’s just one more feature onboard their fleet (in the January catalog, KDDI showed six of 11 handsets as having GPS capability). Also: Looks like Japan’s WLAN market – in addition to being highly fragmented – is one of the cheapest.

Will Japan BREW Jolt Java?

Will Japan BREW Jolt Java?After a two-year business strategy planning pause, BREW finally launched in Japan last month. From the consumer point of view, BREW and Java work more or less the same: you navigate a menu, select an application, download it, then run it. There’s little to chose on a technology basis. But BREW – like 3G – may be able to gain a leg up on Java (DoCoMo’s favored choice) if KDDI can continue to roll out cool, fun, cheap, feature-laden (and BREW-enabled) handsets – much as the carrier has done with 3G. Now that KDDI has finally rolled out BREW, we wonder how competition with Java will unfold in 2003? Ironically, BREW’s future may be intimately tied up with that of 3G.

Korea, Japan, Pastel-Hued PDAs, and Tokyo's Good 'ol Days are Back

The past couple of weeks saw two lavish events at trendy Tokyo venues hosted by carriers NTT DoCoMo and J-Phone to fete their content provider communities (so, yes, there was a lot of overlap in the guest lists). One attendee at the J-Phone event, held at Zepp in Odaiba, reported that it was a sweaty, raucous evening with content community punters packed in six deep. “There was a lengthy line-up of folks waiting to exchange meishi business cards,” she said, adding that a good time was had, evidently, by all.