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Survey: Handset Upgrade Features

Nepro Japan recently conducted this survey focused on Japanese cell phone users new handset upgrade feature priorities. The questionnaire returned 3,817 valid responses and indicated demographics show 56% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 35% in their twenties, 43% in their thirties, and 19% aged forty or older. Some rather interesting results after the jump.

Failure to execute doesn't mean i-mode is dead (yet)

After last week’s O2 and Telstra i-mode cancellation news came out, it took hardly any time at all for the obfuscation and mis-analyses to hit the Web.

Failure to execute doesn't mean that i-mode is dead (yet)

The news, in case you missed it, confirmed that Australia’s Telstra would, and the UK’s O2 most likely would, end their i-mode services; Telstra will terminate i-mode support at the end of this year, while O2 will stop selling new handsets this month and phase the service out over the next two years.

O2 UK was reported to have 260,000 active users, a dozen i-mode-compatible handsets and some 150 sites; O2 Ireland has not stated their subscriber numbers, but the Times said total O2 subscribers were 546,000, implying that Ireland had 286,000 i-moders. Telstra reportedly has fewer than 60,000 subscribers. WWJ members login for the full skinny.

NEC Develops 8 Megapixel IC

According to this article, NEC has started shipping samples of their new CE131, not to be confused with the AP131, wonder chip for ¥4,000 each with mass production scheduled for October this year. The LSI has an interface for a 512 Mbit external memory, double the capacity used in the existing model, allowing the processing of 8 megapixel image data.

Toshiba Pushing NAND Memory

Toshiba has announced a new series of embedded NAND Flash memories for mobile phones offering both a configurable single-level cell (SLC) memory area and a multi-level cell (MLC) memory area, allowing applications and data to be stored on the same chip. The five memories in the mobileLBA-NAND series range in capacity from 2- to 32-gigabits(1) (Gb). The 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb versions can be allocated as SLC up to their full capacity, while the 16Gb and 32Gb versions can support up to 8Gb of SLC, offering manufacturers greater flexibility in allocating memory in their products. Samples of mobileLBA-NAND packaged in MCPs will be available from August 2007.

Willcom Introduces New Smart Phone

Willcom, Sharp and Microsoft held a press conference yesterday at the Okura Hotel to announce the new W-Zero3 ES smartphone. The 3rd model in their series from Sharp this latest unit weighs in at 157grams and measures just under 18mm thick. Boasting a 3.3 inch VGA (480×800) LCD touch-screen display and the so-called xCrawl jog dial with Windows 6 OS running on Marvells PXA270 520MHz processor and Wi-Fi enabled this device will be available on order here by the end of June. WWJ was on-hand for the event and will post video asap, more details after the jump.