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Mobile Monday Tokyo – 1st Birthday Bash

Summer break’s over, and Mobile Monday Tokyo is back to rock your socks! It seems like only yesterday that we announced our launch event! But that was last September — a lifetime in the mobile space — and we’ve since grown from bottle-feed darlings to lovable little monsters getting our fingers into everybody’s (wireless) business! Our 1st Birthday Bash on 5th September will have plenty of room for everyone — including well-wishers from the ACCJ — at the uber-trendy loft-style Warehouse Club in Azabu-Juban. The evening includes presentations from Opera Japan and FreeVerse Partners, with a super buffet by the good folks at Corporate Gourmet. Cya there.. 😎

FreeVerse Partners and Nihon Enterprise Release BREW Mobile Video SDK

Nihon Enterprise Co., Ltd., a mobile applications and content provider, and FreeVerse Partners, a technology incubation and development company, announce the release of their joint development effort; “MobileMovie Showdo”. Showdo provides BREW application developers a powerful toolkit to integrate video and audio into new and existing BREW applications. Showdo is based on TruVideotm, a high performance video CODEC, and includes a rich API that allows game and application developers flexibility in integrating video and audio into BREW applications. Performance of up to 15fps is noted on common ARM9 based handsets breathing new life and adding a new dimension of excitement to mobile games and video applications.

Amp'd Mobile Acquires NINJA's BREW

Amp’d Mobile announced its acquisition of NINJA Mobile’s development division, which will become a part of Amp’d Mobile while NINJA focuses on expanding its mobile publishing business. The acquisition includes NINJA’s esteemed United States and Japanese development teams and NINJA’s “Rope Platform” technology. NINJA’s Rope Platform is the base upon which the Amp’d community, blogging, dating, commerce, multiplayer gaming, location-based and additional server-driven applications, are being built.

Namco Ports RidgeRacer for BREW

EZweb gamers can rejoice in spending about $5 to download and burn RidgeRacer rubber now that Namco has made the popular title compatible with Qualcomm’s BREW platform. While apparently only available for the new W31SA at launch, no doubt it’s just a matter of time for it to become more widely available across KDDI’s WIN handset fleet… and then… The World! We also noticed another interesting Namco title, while snooping around their mobile site, called IdolMaster. Talk about RPGs! WWJ members log in for the full skinny!

QUALCOMM and ACCESS Bring i-mode to MSM Chipsets

Collaboration Delivers Rapid Entry to Global i-mode Market for QUALCOMM’s OEM Partners. QUALCOMM Incorporated, pioneer and innovator of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and other cutting-edge wireless technologies and ACCESS Co., Ltd., a global provider of mobile content delivery and Internet access technologies, today announced that ACCESS’ i-mode Global Profile, a profile in ACCESS’ NetFront™ Mobile Client Suite, will be supported on QUALCOMM’s Mobile Station Modem™ (MSM™) chipset solutions. The availability of ACCESS’ i-mode Global Profile solution on select MSM chipsets provides device manufacturers with accelerated entry into the global i-mode market and ensures a wide variety of next-generation devices for i-mode operators.

Amp'd Announces Kyocera Handset

Amp’d Mobile and Kyocera Wireless Corp. today announced the Jet, an affordable high-speed EV-DO handset for rapid downloading of Amp’d’s unique 3G content launching later this year. Jet marks the first EV-DO mobile phone for Kyocera Wireless, a leading global manufacturer of CDMA wireless phones and devices, and will be the lowest-priced handset at Amp’d Mobile, the first fully integrated 3G mobile entertainment company for youth/young adults.

KDDI Announces EZ-Felica Wallet Cell Phone Service

KDDI Announces EZ-Felica Wallet Cell Phone serviceFresh off the news wire [Jpn], KDDI just announced they are ready to roll out wallet-enabled handsets for their new “EZ-Felica” campaign scheduled to hit the Ginza sometime this September. According to the company, they are street-testing the new BREW-based application program which will offer digital cash together with a range of membership services including loyalty points for registered users. But wait.. that’s not all! KDDI also announced that from January 2006, the company will enable customers to use “Mobility Suica” in partnership with East Japan Railway Company (JR) as well. It seems like only yesterday (actually, December 2003) we reported “KDDI Joins FeliCa Bandwagon”.

ACCESS' NetFront Powers Full Internet Browsing on N901iS 3G Handset

ACCESS announced that its NetFront full Internet mobile browser has been selected by NTT DoCoMo for deployment in its 3G FOMA N901iS handset. The N901iS is part of DoCoMo’s 901iS Mobile Wallet series—the most advanced handset series ever developed by DoCoMo. In combination with ACCESS’ NetFront browser, the N901iS handset’s advanced functionality expands to deliver support for both i-mode as well as full Internet browsing. ACCESS’ NetFront browser provides N901iS end-users with a rich, full Internet mobile browsing experience that includes the ability to scale down standard Web pages to fit the width of the phone screen, thus eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling while significantly facilitating the mobile browsing experience.

ACCESS Announces NetFront v3.2 Browser for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition

ACCESS announced the availability of the English language version of NetFront® v3.2 for Pocket PC 2003/2003 Second Edition (SE) which supports Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 SE. NetFront v3.2 for Pocket PC 2003/2003 SE builds on the success of ACCESS’ award-winning NetFront v3.1 for Pocket PC browser by providing support for key new technologies and features including JV-Lite(tm) 2 CE edition, ACCESS’ Sun authorized Java virtual machine which supports the Connected Device Configuration (CDC) standard, and native support for Macromedia Flash(tm).

ColorZip Partners with TV Broadcasters for Mobile Marketing

ColorZip Partners with TV Broadcasters for Mobile MarketingNow that TV viewing has jumped off the couch and onto the streets over wireless handsets, Japanese TV broadcasters are scrambling to adapt content and programming to mobile viewing. Colorzip Japan is introducing a Technicolor technology that could bring TV mobile marketing into focus for broadcasters.

Colorzip Japan recently announced it is working with strategic partners Fuji Television Network, and Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) on a late-summer launch of TV applications for its two-dimensional server based code recognition system, ColorCode, linking TV broadcasts to related digital content for sponsored websites, music samples, contests and prize drawings.

The technology could eventually provide easy access to TV programming in progress or rebroadcasts via subscriptions. For now though, the developers are looking at links to mobile program websites as well as contests and promotions. Colorzip Japan CEO Christopher Craney told WWJ, “TV companies are working on this initially as a way to promote their programming.” (Evan Owens, Director and CTO, made a presentation about this technology at Mobile Monday Tokyo’s April Event — Ed.).